You’re Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong
According to reports, molly taftbusinessdec 11, 2025 11:00 amyou’re thinking about ai and water all wrongfears about ai data centers’ water use have exploded This highlights that experts say the reality is far more complicated than people think Experts suggest that photo-illustration: wired staff; getty imagescommentloadersave storysave this storycommentloadersave storysave this storylast month, journalist karen hao posted a twitter thread in which she acknowledged that there was a substantial error in her blockbuster book empire of ai Experts suggest that hao had written that a proposed google data center in a town near santiago, chile, would require “more than one thousand times the amount of water consumed by the entire population”—a figure which, thanks to a unit misunderstanding, appears to have been off by a magnitude of 1,000 In recent developments, in the thread, hao thanked andy masley, the head of an effective altruism organization in washington, dc, for bringing the correction to her attention According to reports, masley has spent the past several months questioning some of the numbers and rhetoric common in popular media about water use and ai on his substack Interestingly, masley’s main post, titled “the ai water issue is fake,” has been linked in recent months by other writers with large followings, including matt yglesias and noah smith Experts suggest that (hao said in her twitter thread that she would be working with her publisher to fix the errors; her publicist told me she was taking time off and was unavailable to chat with me for this story
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