We know AI is artificial, meaning it does not have a human body.

However, it has data centers, which house many servers needed to support the questions, which exceed 1 billion daily.

This amount of inquiries requires high-performance electrical equipment, which produces heat that can damage the devices and result in malfunctions. To counteract this, various types of coolant methods are needed.

What does that have to do with us? Your search consumes, on average, less than a teaspoon of water. Not so bad, right? According to some sources, with the amount of searches each user enters, which on average is more than just one, and with the number of users each day across the globe, popular generative AI sites need approximately 10,000,000 liters of freshwater per day, which is 2,641,720 gallons.

Before we even get to the point of typing in your homework question, training an AI model can generate a carbon footprint equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars.

Most data centers use evaporative cooling systems, so some of the water is lost as vapor and cannot be recovered, but not all. Still, this causes a net water loss to the local environment.

Let’s say you refuse to use generative AI. Do you still use Google? In 2023, Google calculated that its data centers used as much water as 40 golf courses.

Either way you choose to get your information, take a moment to gather your thoughts so that instead of asking more questions, we ask better questions.