In recent years, Artificial Intelligence, better known as AI, has advanced immensely compared to what it once was. With the first chatbot appearing in 1966 as a therapist, which reused given responses from humans to prolong conversations, to, in recent times, an AI that can generate its own original responses. Like the popular app ChatGPT, AI is often used to generate images, help with homework, provide answers, and even write entire essays, with some jobs even being replaced by an AI that works 125,000 times faster. But with all this efficiency, there comes a toll.

Data Centers

AI’s use hundreds of circuits and servers to answer simple questions, and even more to generate images, but with so many servers, where are they stored? The answer is simple: Data Centers. Data Centers are huge facilities used by companies and corporations to keep the AI hardware safe and secure but are also used as places to train AIs and maintain them. However, because of AI’s power demand, a substantial amount of electricity is needed, which runs through their thousands of circuits, causing threats of overheating and servers crashing.

In order to prevent overheating, some facilities install aquifers to keep the buildings cool and regulated, But this type of cooling requires massive amounts of fresh water. This means that only medium-sized facilities consume up to 110 million gallons of fresh water annually, and with 3,789 Data Centers of varying sizes in the U.S., we alone use 1.8 billion gallons of fresh water annually solely for these centers. Causing increasing stress on fresh water reserves and destroying fresh water ecosystems.

Electricity Usage

Data centers don’t just use fresh water in copious amounts; they also use an immense amount of electricity and power to keep their servers up and running for the public’s use and enjoyment. In 2024, the IEA, also known as the International Energy Agency, estimated the energy wattage consumed by data centers in the U.S. alone to be 183 terawatts and estimated it to grow to 426 TW by 2030. To put it into perspective, a single terawatt uses 9 million watts of energy, compared to your average cell phone that uses 4.3 watts.

With its largest energy source being natural gas, and even though it’s the cleanest fossil fuel, it is in no way safe for our environment. With most natural gases being made up of strong greenhouse gases like hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and others alike being released into our environment, contributing to pollution and therefore impacting our environments in a variety of harmful ways, data centers in 2023 had to pay $6 billion in public health damages and are expected to pay up to $10-20 billion in 2030.

Conclusion

The two listed impacts are just two drops in an ocean, with long-lasting effects and irreversible damages; ranging from jobs being taken, AI scams, fake footage, and the humility of art being questioned to draining fresh water resources and releasing carbon emissions. In the end, it begs the question, is the efficacy really worth it?