You’re Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong
Last month, the journalist Karen Hao posted a thread on Twitter in which she acknowledged that there was a substantial error in her bestselling book. AI Empire. Hao had written that a proposed Google 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 figure that, thanks to a misunderstanding, appears to have been off by a thousand.
In the thread, Hao thanked Andy Masley, head of an effective altruist organization in Washington, D.C., for bringing the correction to his attention. Masley has spent the last few months questioning some common numbers and rhetoric in popular media about water consumption and AI on his sub-stack. Masley’s main message, titled “The AI Water Problem is Wrong,” has been linked to in recent months by other widely followed authors, including Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith. (Hao said in her Twitter feed that she would work with her editor to correct the errors; her publicist told me she was taking time off and was not available to chat with me for this story.)
When I called him to talk more about AI and water, Masley emphasized that he was not an expert, but “just a guy” who was interested in how the media covered this topic and how it shaped the opinions of those around him.
“I would sometimes say that I used ChatGPT at parties, and people would say, ‘Oh, it uses so much energy and water. How can you use that?” he said. “I was a little surprised when people spoke so darkly about just a little water.”
As local and national opposition to data centers has grown, so have concerns about their environmental impacts. 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 has started to fight back. In November, the co-chairs of the AI Infrastructure Coalition, a new industry group, wrote an article for Fox News that addressed environmental concerns. “Water consumption? Minimal and often recycled, less than that of American golf courses,” they wrote. One of the article’s authors, former Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, is currently pushing for a proposed data center in the state, which has sparked local backlash, including concerns about water consumption. The coalition also approvingly retweeted a message from Masley about the impact of AI on energy prices. (Masley maintains an exhaustive disclaimer on his substack refuting allegations that he is paid by the industry to share his opinions.)
