Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land
TL;DR
Guardian analysis finds facilities to be built in some of the driest areas as outcry grows over water needed to power AI A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found.
Nauti's Take
The next AI bottleneck is not GPUs, it is water. Builders who only talk about compute costs are ignoring the physical bill.
Putting datacenters in drought zones is not an operations footnote, it is a predictable permitting and reputation problem.
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