Concerns about the heavy water consumption for AI technology development
The significant and increasing use of large amounts of water by major global tech companies to cool data centers that operate on AI has raised concerns about the impact of this on the world’s environment.
According to the Financial Times on February 25th, concerns about water scarcity have intensified over the past year as these companies fiercely compete to offer products based on generative AI that can rapidly process vast amounts of data.
Achieving language processing models with high and fast computational power by these companies requires massive servers that need cooling.
Based on the latest available data from 2022, Microsoft’s water consumption increased by 34%, Google’s by 22%, and Meta’s by 3%, but since then, the competition among these companies has intensified.
Establishing data centers underwater, which naturally provides a cooler environment, might be one of the innovative solutions for the future.