💧 Ignoring data center risks

DATA CENTERS

Brazil dives headfirst into data centers opportunity, but ignores environmental risks

As the global population has discovered over the last year, there’s no such thing as a free prompt. A wave of studies and articles have cast a spotlight on the previously underexplored environmental cost of the use of generative artificial intelligence — a matter that becomes particularly relevant to Brazil, which sees itself as a promising new frontier for the world’s AI data centers.

One notable and widely shared study by the University of California and The Washington Post showed that conjuring a 100-word email using ChatGPT consumes an average of more than 500 milliliters of water. Generating images via AI would have a rate of consumption roughly 60 times higher.

In simple terms, AI models need to carry out thousands of calculations in order to answer any and all prompts they are given. Completing these calculations requires energy, which in turn causes the supercomputers that operate these models to heat up. In order to avoid interrupting service, these servers — housed at large facilities known as data centers — have liquid-based cooling systems to keep their temperatures down, which is where water consumption comes into the equation…

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