In his new book “Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires,” writer Paris Marx examines how local communities are resisting the growing demand for water to cool data centers.
After ChatGPT was released in November 2022, the tech industry was quick to herald the chatbot as the marker of a new wave of technological progress. As companies pushed to create more powerful AI models, the water demand of their ambitions took a while to become clear. In April 2023, a research paper out of the University of California estimated that training the large language model behind the initial version of ChatGPT had required 185,000 gallons of water. For every extended conversation someone had with the chatbot or every time they asked it to write an email, they were effectively pouring a bottle of water down the drain.
