The article highlights the urgent crisis posed by AI data centers in the U.S., which contribute significantly to water scarcity by using enormous amounts of water for cooling and energy. A recent report indicates that 58% of these centers are situated in areas of high water stress, compounding an existing problem caused by overuse and climate change. The average 100-megawatt data center consumes around two million liters of water daily. As generative AI projects grow, their energy and water demands will likely escalate further, worsening this vital resource crisis.
"AI data centers, built for companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and xAI, have been criticized for their huge energy demands, but their eye-popping water usage hasn't been as publicized."
"To put that jargon into perspective, the problem here is that the average 100-megawatt hyperscale data center in the U.S. uses about two million liters of water a day, which is the equivalent of 6,500 households, per the International Energy Agency."
"Fundamentally, it is just computing, but a generative AI training cluster might consume seven or eight times more energy than a typical computing workload," Noman Bashir said.
"58% of all of these facilities in the U.S. located in places of high or extremely high water stress."
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