Grandfather Michael, one trillion of anything is mind-boggling!
I cannot imagine what a thousand “thousands” looks like, let alone one million “millions”.
And then the billionaires at the White House, with promises for more electricity to grow more AI with faster and bigger data centres.
Frightening! Unchecked growth amidst calls to stop regulating AI, and now the tech giants have a green light from the US President to create more.
Yes, I am afraid for the grandkids, the AI bullet train left the station and is likely speeding north to get our water to power and cool all those AI data centres. According to the International Energy Agency, the US accounted for the largest share of global data center electricity consumption in 2024, at 45%, and it is only getting worse. AI data centres are predicted to double by 2035.
The silent crisis is AI’s significant water footprint. While it is estimated that one single Google search requires half a millilitre of water in energy, ChatGPT consumes 500 millilitres of water for every five to 50 prompts. Water is used to extract the minerals in AI hardware. Our real fear is not AI, it is the destruction of our planet in creating it. AI data centres are coming for our land, water, and power. We will dry up wells and lakes, much like Georgia just experienced, and we have already crossed seven of the eight safe Earth System Boundaries for water. Meta has said the solution will be nuclear energy. But none of this will happen quickly, perhaps not even before 2035, when the number of AI centres doubles. Nuclear power won’t even keep up with the mad pace of creating more and more AI. We do not have enough water to support what exists now.
So what now? Grandfather Michael, how can your addiction to Annie and the world’s thirst for the digital world be sustained? How do we stop the destruction of our physical world as we know it? Some researchers have argued that we can use AI to solve these problems. So, should we let AI run the world for us and just retreat to our digital cocoons? Would it not be more efficient for AI to harness our energy and simply sustain our minds that “live” in a digital world created for us? Is The Matrix now the way to solve humanity’s demise and our grandchildren’s future?