Emerging technology is water thirsty. As more and more compute power is needed for AI this requires higher levels of cooling.
Worldwide demand for AI could be responsible for withdrawing between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water by 2027 — almost half of the United Kingdom’s annual water consumption.
There are countless examples where emerging technology breaches the social boundaries e.g. a data center cluster in Iowa, which was used to train OpenAI’s GPT-4 consumed 6% of the district’s water, prompting a lawsuit from the residents. Similarly, Google’s plan to open a data center in Uruguay sparked nationwide protest over its possible consumption of 7.6 million liters of water a day to cool its servers — equivalent to 55,000 people’s daily consumption.
We all need to be responsible for the ESG impacts of AI and emerging tech and judiciously evaluate the use cases. As we actively pursue more effective methods to mitigate environmental impacts, we can find solace in the fact that artificial intelligence holds significant potential for revolutionizing water management and treatment systems on a global scale.
Thinking Space 