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The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water
The state is home to the data center capital of the world. Can it handle AI's thirst?
“I think as we look towards climate change and drought, somebody has to start asking these questions about how that impacts water supply and future increasing need,” said Kyle Hart, a program manager of the National Parks Conservation Association in Alexandria, one of the groups involved in the recently formed Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition. And AI scales exponentially: Large-scale algorithms, used by the likes of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, consume at least 100 times more computing power and process millions of more data points than simpler kinds of machine learning. Shaolei Ren, an engineering professor at University of California, Riverside, said that instead of returning the water to a city wastewater system, like the one connected to your drains at home, use cooling methods that rely on evaporation.
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