In other news, tech companies are making significant moves. OpenAI and Anthropic are spending billions on training models, while Zoom has announced a new single-user webinar feature that can accommodate up to 1 million attendees. Former President Donald Trump has stirred controversy with AI-generated memes on his platform, Truth Social. Meanwhile, Amazon is considering moving its payment offerings in India into a standalone app, and AMD is acquiring ZT Systems for $4.9 billion to boost its AI ecosystem.
Key takeaways:
- The AI boom is increasing the demand for data centers, which in turn is driving up water consumption due to the need to cool computing equipment.
- In Virginia, home to the world's largest concentration of data centers, water usage jumped by almost two-thirds between 2019 and 2023.
- Major data center operators like Microsoft and Google are consuming significant amounts of water from areas with water stress or high water scarcity.
- While some data centers do recycle water in a closed-loop system, much of the water consumed is used for humidity control and therefore evaporates, making the current trend unsustainable.