Artificial Intelligence is being touted as humanity’s future. What merits examination though is whether that future is sustainable in environmental terms. This is because the humongous data centres, integral to the AI revolution, that are being built by technology giants based in the United States of America but in other countries are extracting a worrying price in terms of electricity and water in the host nations. A survey by the Synergy Research Group found that almost 60% of the 1,244 largest data centres in the world are housed outside the US. In Ireland, data centres are guzzling over 20% of that country’s electricity; South Africa has found its national grid to be under strain and Chile is losing its aquifers because of these installations. Brazil, Britain, Malaysia, the Netherlands and, importantly, India — there are others — are also discovering the rather discomfiting side of data centres. In many nations, there are signs of public unrest regarding the depletion of energy sources and water. The mood in Ireland, which rolled out the proverbial red carpet for global tech and its data centres, has gone sour, with a huge backlash directed at these centres. Protests in Chile forced Google to disband a data centre that would have had an adversarial impact on water reserves.

Big Tech seems to be unwilling to honour the principles of transparency and accountability for these transgressions. Google, Amazon and Microsoft build data centres through subsidiaries in a bid to mask their associations. Charges of extraction of resources by these companies are usually met with pious — hollow? — promises to lighten their environmental footprint or, worse, outright denial. There is a need for international regulators — the COP 30 begins next month — to examine this rising threat, especially since the markers of AI’s environmental toxicity are spread unequally, with regions and communities sharing the burden disproportionately. For instance, in 2022, Google’s data centres in Finland functioned on 97% carbon-free energy; but the figure fell to 4%-18% for its data centres in Asia. AI that is environmentally cleaner is the need of the hour.