AI is taking water from the desert
… The American Southwest has become the site of a collision between two civilization-defining trends. In this desert heat, the explosive growth of generative AI is pitched against a changing climate’s treacherous extremes. … Public data hint at the potential toll of this approach. Researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year, for example, that global AI demand could cause data centers to suck up 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water by 2027.
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