The Water Footprint of Artificial Intelligence

While Artificial Intelligence has become an incredible tool for the future, its environmental impact is tremendous. One way AI takes a toll on the environment is it's water usage.

Artificial Intelligence is incredibly complex and requires large scale facilities, such as data centers, to operate. However, one of the downsides of data centers is that they tend to use a significant amount of water for cooling and energy purposes. For cooling, one data center can consume up to 18,000 gallons of water in just one day. Additionally, Google, a large corporation with a ton of data centers, used over 21 billion liters of potable water in 2022.

A substantial amount of water consumption and waste stems from the manufacturing process of AI technology. The production of hardware used in data centers, such as semiconductors and micro chips, expends a large volume of water for cooling. Additionally, the water used is directly extracted from natural water sources, such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater, which already has limited availability. After being used, the water discharged can contain pollutants from the production and manufacturing process, which can be incredibly harmful to ecosystems if not disposed of properly.  

The Training stage of an AI model is incredibly energy intensive and requires a great amount of water for heat dispersion and cooling. For example, training an AI to be at the same computing level of a human brain for one year can use 126,000 liters of water for just one model. Additionally, it was estimated training ChatGPT-3 in Microsoft’s U.S. data centers could consume up to 5.4 million liters of water, with 700,000 liters being clean freshwater.

It is also important to note water usage estimates from big tech companies are often quite conservative, meaning AI’s true water consumption may prove to be much higher than previously anticipated.

AI technology takes a huge toll on our ecosystems and planet as a whole. It is for that reason Young Adults for Green AI is dedicated to raising awareness on the importance of eco-friendly AI, so we may preserve our earth.