Not too far from California, and with plenty of cheap land, Greater Phoenix is among the fastest-growing hubs in the U.S. for data centers.

The American Southwest has become the site of a collision between two civilization-defining trends. In this desert heat, the explosive growth of generative AI is pitched against a changing climate’s treacherous extremes. The situation is already bad enough to worry residents in Goodyear, as several told me on my visit. And it’s only going to get worse.

…Public data hint at the potential toll of this approach. Researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year, for example, that global AI demand could cause data centers to suck up 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water by 2027. A separate study from a university in the Netherlands, this one peer-reviewed, found that AI servers’ electricity demand could grow, over the same period, to be on the order of 100 terawatt hours per year, about as much as the entire annual consumption of Argentina or Sweden. Microsoft’s own environmental reports show that, during the initial uptick in the AI platform’s growth, the company’s resource consumption was accelerating. In fiscal year 2022, the most recent year for which Microsoft has released data, the tech giant’s use of water and electricity grew by about a third; in absolute terms, it was the company’s largest-ever reported increase, year to year.

Hao, K. (2024, March 1). AI is taking water from the desert. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602/