Ep.21 - The water crisis in the time of AI

Water is the most commonly exchanged resource in the world. The “virtual market” of blue gold is four-hundred times that of petrol. But the water crisis is one of the main emergencies of our time, especially since technological acceleration requires a constant use of water. For every twenty prompts given to ChatGPT, we consume half a liter. In order to train the third generation of GPT, it took 700 thousand liters. The revolution of artificial intelligence requires enormous amounts of H₂O to cool down the intricate web of servers. Readily available water reserves have halved since 1970, and at this rate they may run dry by 2040…