The Truth About AI's Water Use

It's complicated--and it might not matter that much. There are two competing schools of thought over just how water-intensive AI is. In one, the technology is horribly thirsty. Data centers will exacerbate droughts throughout the country and "drain the great lakes," as one popular Reddit thread puts it. The former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has taken up the issue, sarcastically posting at one point: "How dare the peasants complain about data centers stealing their water and driving the cost of electricity!!" The other school, populated by Silicon Valley types, holds that "The Data Center Water Crisis Isn't Real," as an article in the right-wing publication Pirate Wires argued in December.