Yes, AI is the new plastic because our relationship to it is proving just as short-termist. There isn’t enough evidence to suggest that we are planning, as a planet, for AI’s long-term risks. We’re governed mostly, in fact, by what AI is doing now.

Let me give you three stark examples of this dangerous parallel.

First, the deployment rush mirrors plastic’s early adoption. Just as plastic was rapidly integrated into everything from food packaging to furniture in the 1950s without understanding microplastics or ocean pollution, we’re embedding AI into critical systems—healthcare diagnostics, criminal justice algorithms, financial lending—without fully grasping the long-term societal consequences. Companies are racing to deploy AI solutions because they work today, not because we understand what happens when these systems scale globally over decades.

Second, the waste problem is already emerging. Plastic gave us convenience but created islands of garbage in our oceans. AI is creating mountains of digital waste—energy consumption that rivals entire countries, discarded datasets filled with bias, and obsolete models that leave behind discriminatory patterns embedded in institutions. The environmental cost of training a single large language model equals the lifetime emissions of several cars, yet we’re churning out new models monthly.

Third, the regulatory lag is identical. It took 70 years to start seriously regulating plastic, and even now, microplastics contaminate our bloodstreams while governments debate solutions. With AI, we’re seeing the same pattern: algorithmic bias is already reshaping hiring and lending, deepfakes are destabilizing democracy, and automated systems are making life-altering decisions with little oversight. Yet our regulatory frameworks are years behind the technology.