At Bright Edge Solutions, we get asked some version of this question almost every week: “Should we use AI tools?” Clients want a straight answer, and the honest one is: it depends on how you use it.
Where AI earns its place
We’re not AI skeptics — we’re an IT firm, and we use these tools ourselves. Recently, a client acquisition meant merging two separate Microsoft 365 tenants: different domains, different user policies, different mailbox structures, all needing to become one clean environment without breaking anything for end users. It’s the kind of project that used to eat months of careful, manual work. AI helped us move through it faster, catching configuration issues we might have otherwise found the hard way.
That’s the kind of task where AI genuinely earns its keep — complex, high-stakes, and time-consuming enough that the payoff clearly outweighs the cost.
Where it doesn’t
But we don’t run every small question through an AI tool by default, and that’s on purpose. Not every task needs it. Simple lookups, routine troubleshooting, quick clarifications — the stuff most of us do dozens of times a day — doesn’t require firing up a large model. Using AI selectively, rather than reflexively, is a deliberate choice for us.
The cost most people don’t see
Here’s the part that doesn’t usually come up in these conversations: AI isn’t free just because it feels instant. Every query runs on physical infrastructure — servers that draw real electricity and, in many cases, real water for cooling. That infrastructure is closer than most Columbus businesses realize. There’s a data center about 20 minutes up New Albany Road built specifically for AI training and inference — part of a growing cluster of hyperscale facilities that’s turned the New Albany area into one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the country.
Some newer facilities use more efficient design — waterless cooling and better energy systems. That’s a genuinely good trend. But “more efficient” isn’t the same as “no impact,” and as AI use scales up across nearly every industry, the aggregate footprint is worth paying attention to, not waving away.
Our approach
As a Columbus-based IT firm, and as people who care about the environmental cost of the technology we recommend, we try to hold both truths at once: AI can be a genuinely useful tool for the right problems, and it comes with real resource costs that deserve honest acknowledgment — not blind adoption and not blanket rejection.
We think that’s a more useful conversation than “AI: yes or no?” And we’d love to hear how other local business owners are navigating it.
Have thoughts on how your business uses AI — or doesn’t? Reach out, we’d genuinely like to hear your take.