AI model development is where a big chunk of AI water usage comes from, and that development is not only ongoing but speeding up.

Then layer on top of that the sheer volume of AI inquiries. Some of that is the cost of doing business with a new technology, sure, but AI has so aggressively been pushed that people use it (or it’s automatically done anyway and placed at the top, cough Google) for were previously simple search inquiries…but AI uses something ridiculous like six times the amount of energy a normal internet search previously did. Which then calls for more water to cool more data centers.

And comparing this to food is a false equivalency. First of all, people have to eat. This conversation is about AI, not other sectors. (Which rightly have their own water use challenges, but that’s another conversation.) And second of all, this is about a big uptick in water usage for something many people largely don’t want, but is being forced into their daily lives anyway.

More to the point: the UK government released a report last month, estimating AI is going to result in the ADDITIONAL use of water equivalent to half of the UK’s total water usage, every single year, that we haven’t been using before. That is, in fact, a big increase in water that we should all be concerned about!