AI’s Water Use Sparks Protests Across U.S. Southwest
From Texas to Arizona, locals protest data center expansion over AI's water and energy use, while actual consumption figures remain murky.
Many data centers rely at least partly on water to absorb heat from air or surfaces, then cause cooling as it evaporates, much like sweating cools the human body. Processors inside data centers can reach internal temperatures of up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit, for the same reasons an overtaxed laptop heats up. While there is little doubt that data centers consume significant amounts of energy, water consumption is more complicated.
Claims circulating online bring scant clarity, ranging from articles asserting that chatbots can consume 500 ml of water per query to some online commentators declaring AI’s water issue nonexistent. The consumption data published by large tech companies themselves are often incomplete and inconsistent, the report noted.