09/02/2026
How we use AI has an impact on energy and water use: the format we choose, the number of retries, whether we reuse or regenerate.
Small decisions, repeated at scale matter.
Sources:
Energy estimates: Google Research (Patterson et al., 2021)
Water estimates (data-center cooling): Making AI Less Thirsty, UC Riverside (2023)
Data centers & energy: International Energy Agency (IEA)
And of course, Chatgpt!