A recent study by the University of California-Riverside has uncovered the significant water footprint of running artificial intelligence queries. Data processing centers, responsible for the cloud computations of AI queries, consume large volumes of water for cooling purposes. In 2021, Google's U.S. data centers alone used an estimated 12.7 billion liters of water.
The study highlights the growing impact of AI on water consumption, as the sector continues to expand rapidly. For instance, two weeks of training the GPT-3 AI program in Microsoft's state-of-the-art U.S. data centers required around 700,000 liters of water.Mudslide Obstructs Access to Colorado WWTP
A mudslide in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, recently
