Kerri Hickenbottom speaks to 'Daily Wildcat' about AI's environmental impact
As conversations about artificial intelligence usage spark ethical debates in the classroom, another important conversation is also happening: the effect of our AI usage on the environment.
Amara Williams
The Daily Wildcat spoke with Kerri Hickenbottom, associate professor of CHEE, about the environmental impact of data centers that support artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT.
Speaking with Sam Parker and Kanishka Chinnaraj, Hickenbottom highlighted how these data centers use vast amounts of water to support their cooling systems.
"If you think about your home, you have a swamp cooler that cools your home, which is like a mechanical compression system. These systems take quite a bit of water to operate," Hickenbottom said, adding that cooling systems for AI data centers operate similarly by using water to cool servers.
"On site, they may not use a lot of water, but they use a lot of water at the power generation facility that generates the energy to run your cooling system.”
In Arizona, especially, AI data centers may contribute to an already concerning water shortage.