The Fountain of Youth: How Much Work Can Be Lost and How Much Water Can Be Wasted?

We have discovered the fountain of youth, and it is called artificial intelligence.

Like the mythical spring that promised eternal life, AI promises eternal efficiency: work done faster, better, cheaper than any human could manage. And like the conquistadors who searched desperately for that fountain, we have drunk from AI without asking what it will cost us. The fountain of youth has made its way across all areas of work and all hierarchical levels. We expected shifts in manufacturing, in customer service, in data entry. We expected automation to replace assembly line workers and call center representatives. What we did not expect was for AI to come for top management. We knew they could be replaced for ethical failures, for ineffectiveness, or for legal violations, but not simply because AI could do the job cheaper. The manna has come for them too.

The Question We Are Asking (And the One We Are Not) In the 1960s, when we first began to hear about artificial intelligence, we did not dare think the future they predicted would result in what we see today. Tech companies are shredding jobs some by the thousands to AI (called AI washing). Companies not affiliated with tech or not deploying AI are eliminating jobs. Every day a job is lost and as these lost jobs are rarely replaced or create new opportunities. What happens when the job market is fully saturated and there are no new jobs/opportunities to be found? Everywhere, across all age groups, and around all time periods, the question is the same: “Will AI replace all jobs?”

Some in the know say with certainty, “Of course not.” Others laugh sheepishly and shrug a no. The truth, no one knows. The hope is that those holding the purse strings and deploying AI are considering the human impact of these workforce disruptions. When I created the terms digital math and life math, they were in response to the mental health impact of these job losses and what happens when people turn to AI as a mental health counselor. We, as life math, are complicated and emotional. And yet, we are driven by the dollar and power. The desire for these things often lead us to act first and think later. When social media first came on the scene, we rushed to the tool before we understood the vulnerabilities these services included. Now all these years later, we are trying to harness the power of their outreach and as we are learning, it is very difficult to put the horse back in the barn once it is loose. Today, we have this fountain of youth known as artificial intelligence that has amazing power and like social media, we are drawn to the money and power of this tool. As an AI enthusiast, I see the potential. Yet, I sit in a precarious intersection. I created an institute to fill the gap for those displaced by AI and their specialization. This work makes me wonder how many people will lose their career to AI. On the other side, it is my hope that one day, AI will be given all of the data research and otherwise to help us either cure or save as many lives as possible. I hope AI will solve our climate/environmental crisis. I think AI can help farmers and others bring an end to hunger on this planet. Some say this is pie in the sky thinking. That may be true but if those in white coats, those holding their research close to the vest, or titles, reputations, and other human hubris would allow AI access to data, this pie in the sky thinking may become answers to our greatest concerns. We are at crossroads. The headlines talk more about the disruptions and very few talk about the outcomes for those who are now in a stacked and chaotic job marketplace. What do these job losses mean to all of us, not simply those who lose the jobs but to the economy? To environment?

How much work can we afford to lose? How much water can we afford to waste? What resources will this fountain of youth consume? We released AI without a clear plan of what this tool could do, what its limitations were and how to address them, and most importantly, what resources — and how much of those resources — the fountain of youth will need to function.

The Work We are Losing Across industries, AI is being deployed to make decisions about hiring, firing, resource allocation, and organizational strategy. And because AI operates on what I call Digital Math, efficiency, speed, cost reduction, algorithmic processing, it optimizes for productivity without accounting for Life Math: the human judgment, context, dignity, and sustainability that AI cannot replicate. The Digital Math is clear: AI is faster, cheaper, more efficient. But the Life Math is missing. What happens to the people whose jobs disappear? What happens to communities when work vanishes? What happens when we optimize for efficiency and sacrifice dignity? We do not know. We have not calculated. We drank from the fountain without counting the cost.

What Else We are Losing The other thing we are losing is confidence in systems and technology of all kind. Most of us do not know what to trust any longer. Many young people do not trust AI. They question the accuracy of the information AI provides but they also question its place in our society. When you talk to young people, you hear their angst about water consumption and AI. But then eventually, they ask about college and what a college degree will mean in the world of AI. They see the massive AI layoffs across all sectors. They are hearing there is no discipline safe from AI. College professors are asking what they should do. In the last few years, misinformation has become so prevalent that many people are unsure of what to believe. Emails, phone calls, and texts are deleted and blocked because people are unsure if they are legitimate. The amount of information sent today is often overwhelming. As a result, distrust has made its way to every generation. AI has amplified this distrust.

The Water We are Wasting Water waste was a problem before AI came along. Cities and towns have been communicating with their citizens about water conservation with some success. We hear about droughts as a result of climate disruptions. With AI using significant amounts of water, the concern for water availability for us will eventually compete with AI’s need for water. The loss of jobs is a serious upheaval to what we know as normal and without a plan on how to come out of this we may find ourselves in a water crisis. AI requires massive computational power. That power generates heat. That heat requires cooling. And cooling requires water, billions of gallons of it. Data centers that train and run AI models consume water at a scale most of us cannot fathom. A single large language model training run can use the equivalent of what a small city consumes in a year. We know water is not an infinite resource. We know droughts are intensifying. We know communities are already fighting over water access. And yet, we continue to deploy AI without planning for conservation, without accounting for environmental cost, without asking: How much water can we afford to waste? We knew AI required electricity. We talked about carbon emissions, energy grids, renewable power. But we did not account for water. We did not ask whether the planet could sustain our thirst for computational efficiency. The fountain of youth promised immortality. AI promises productivity. Both come at a cost we did not calculate.

The Cost of the Fountain In mythology, the fountain of youth always had a cost. Those who drank could not die, but they aged, withered, suffered. Eternal life came at the expense of living well. AI’s fountain has a cost too: Jobs lost without replacement Communities destabilized Water consumed without conservation A planet strained A workforce in crisis We drank without asking the price. We deployed AI across industries, across hierarchies, across systems, without a plan for the displaced, without a strategy for resource conservation, without guardrails to prevent harm. And now we are reaping what we sowed: workers who cannot find jobs, young people swearing off AI entirely and wondering whether college really matters, communities fracturing under economic pressure, and a planet straining under the weight of our computational demands.

What Now? The question is not “Will AI replace all jobs?” The questions are: How many jobs can we afford to lose before communities collapse? How much water can we afford to waste before the planet cannot sustain us? Who benefits from this fountain, and who pays the cost? We cannot undrink from the fountain. AI is here. It is not going away. But we can ask the right questions. We can demand a plan. We can train workers, Institutional Tuners, to manage AI responsibly, to verify its outputs, to catch its hallucinations before they cause harm. We can build guardrails around water consumption. We can ensure AI serves humanity, not just efficiency. The fountain of youth promised immortality. AI promises productivity. But both come at a cost we have not yet fully calculated. It is time to ask: How much work can be lost? How much water can be wasted? Neither those who are building AI data centers and replacing humans with AI nor cities who permit these data centers know the answers to these questions now. All of us will know when it is too late.

— Dr. Rochelle Newton is the founder of the AI Tuner Institute, where she trains workers to manage AI deployment across industries. With 46 years of technology leadership experience, including 14 years at Duke University, she teaches Computer Information Systems at North Carolina Central University and speaks on AI workforce disruption, Digital Math vs. Life Math, institutional tuners, and mental health in the age of AI.