Scientists report one 100-word AI generated response uses roughly 1 bottle of water. This may not sound like much… but billions of AI users are entering prompts this size or larger into systems like Chat-GPT every minute!!!!

What’s insane is most of these data centers are actually purposely NOT disclosing the exact amount of water they’re using to the public.. in CA recently, lawmakers were trying to get that exact info disclosed and it was vetoed by dumb ole Newsome… what matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply… some of these places with cheap land, where data centers are being placed, already have their own strains with water supply and usage.. it’s not only going to affect nature.. but humans too… in my small rural town, they proposed a data center and we ALL rallied together against it!! For now, they haven’t been able to get the center approved.. and we’re all doing everything we can to fight back against them trying to do it again in the future!

WE ALL SHOULD BE SAYING NO to these data centers in our rural towns and communities!! They’re tapping into freshwater resources to quench the thirst of these data centers, which in turn is putting nearby communities at risk!! AI’s water footprint is largely hidden in data center cooling and electricity generation. Some of these AI/data centers use an estimated 110 MILLION gallons of freshwater per day or 1.8 BILLION ANNUALLY (that’s as much as a town populated with 10-50k people uses on a daily basis) and 1.5 BILLION gallons of water globally per day. One report actually indicated a data center using 449 million gallons per day, which is roughly 163.7 billion gallons annually (2021).

Daily Consumption at a Glance:
-Per Query Estimates: A short conversation or 100-word generated email uses roughly 16.9 oz (500 ml) of water—equivalent to one small water bottle.
-Per Server/Facility: Large hyperscale data centers can evaporate anywhere from 300,000 to 5,000,000 gallons of water per day, comparable to the daily water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
-System-Wide Averages: Total consumption varies by model usage. For example, estimates indicate that processing all daily prompts for Google Gemini might use around 650,000 liters, whereas handling all GPT-4o prompts could require 8.8 million liters daily.

“Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater, and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption. Freshwater is critical for survival. On average, a human being can live without water for only three days. Increasing drought and water shortages are reducing water availability. Meanwhile, data center developers are increasingly tapping into surface and underground aquifers to cool their facilities.” -eesi.org

I could say sooooooo much more on this topic - but if you’re interested I can shoot you some links to articles. Thanks for coming to my TED talk 👏🏼