You’re thinking about AI and water wrong

Last month a journalist Karen Howe posted a Twitter thread in which she admitted there was a major flaw in her hugely successful book Artificial intelligence empire. Howe had written that Google’s proposed data center in a town near Santiago, Chile, could require “more than a thousand times the amount of water consumed by the entire population” — a number that, thanks to a misunderstanding of unity, appears to have been exceeded by a force of 1,000.

In the post, Howe thanked Andy Masley, president of Effective Altruism in Washington, D.C., for bringing the correction to her attention. Masley has spent the past few months questioning some of the popular numbers and rhetoric in popular media about water use and artificial intelligence in his subgroup. Masley’s main post, titled “The Water AI Case Is Fake,” has been linked to in recent months by other writers with large followings, including Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith. (Howe said in her Twitter thread that she would work with her publisher to fix the errors; her publicist told me she was taking a leave of absence and was not available to chat with me about this story.)

When I contacted him to talk more about AI and water, Masley emphasized that he was not an expert, but “just a guy” interested in how the media treated the topic — and how it was shaping the opinions of people around him.

“I remember sometimes using ChatGPT at parties, and people would say, ‘Oh, that takes a lot of energy and water,’” he says. How do you use that?” “I’m a little surprised when people talk so bleakly about a little water.”

As local and national opposition to data centers grows, concerns about their environmental impacts grow. Earlier this week, more than 230 green groups sent a letter to Congress, warning that AI and data centers “threaten the economic, environmental, climate, and water security of Americans.”

The AI ​​industry is starting to fight back. In November, the co-chairs of the AI ​​Infrastructure Alliance, a new industry group, authored a Fox News op-ed that touched on environmental concerns. “Water use? Very minimal and mostly recycled, less than on golf courses in America,” they wrote. One of the op-ed’s authors, former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, is currently advocating in favor of a data center project in the state that has drawn local opposition, including over concerns about water use. The coalition also retweeted a post from Masley about the impact of AI on energy prices. (Masley maintains a full disclaimer on his Substack, which refutes claims that the industry pays him to share his opinions.)