Courtesy of Solen Feyissa
At this point in the year, I think that everyone, no matter their stance, has heard the arguments about those losing their jobs to AI, artists and creatives being devalued, about using it to cheat at school, or ChatGPT’s misinformation problems. And, for the most part, I don’t think that any of those arguments have worked: new models are always being trained and ChatGPT stays at the top of the app store. Google anything, and AI results are generated– overall, the cultural conversation around AI hasn’t changed.
There’s something we’re ignoring in that cultural conversation, though. And it’s in the news, but not nearly as much as it should be. Just as we haven’t figured out how bad vapes actually are for us, the human and environmental impacts of training AI models and the data centers that run them are just starting to appear.
According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, large data centers, like those in already water-insecure areas like Arizona, Texas, and California, three hot spots for tech companies, can each consume “up to 5 million gallons per day, or about 1.8 billion annually, usage equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.” As of July 2025, they reported that the United States has 5,426 data centers in total, and the AI era means the demand for these centers has increased exponentially.
How do these centers use so much water? In the simplest terms, the AI servers used to generate answers to all of your questions get extremely hot in the process of calculating, and most data centers use water systems to cool them down again. A 100-word email generated by GPT-4 alone uses the same amount as a bottle of water, according to the Washington Post. This means one email a week for an entire year would require 27 liters. Factor in that over a quarter of Americans have used ChatGPT and other models, and the cost continues to add up.
Water is not the only issue, though, nor is it, in my opinion, the worst. Everything we do online necessitates data centers and, in turn, uses water. I understand this. But it’s the unrestrained rate at which AI models need to be trained, and the rate at which new data centers are being built, that poses the greatest threat to us.
In the Memphis, TN neighborhood of Boxtown, Elon Musk’s massive xAI power plant has been poisoning the low-income community of color that it occupies. Starting in April, Musk, unsatisfied with the rate at which he could train his Grok AI, brought in 35 methane gas turbines, of which they had permission to run only 15. As Time Magazine reported, environmentalists running thermal imaging found heat coming off of 33 of those 35.
Researchers at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, at the request of Time, found that peak nitrogen dioxide concentration levels have “increased by 79% from pre-xAI levels in areas immediately surrounding the data center, and by 9% in nearby Boxtown.” In a neighborhood already ravaged by pollution, Musk’s xAI center is only exacerbating the problem. Years of being used as a dumping ground and industrial center mean that Boxtown residents already suffer from higher cancer rates and extremely high rates of lung problems such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Residents are also now reporting air pollution worse than before, and sickening, choking gas scents in the air, all coming off of the xAI plant.
Even worse, xAI is actively building a second building a few miles away from Boxtown in Whitehaven, expected to be twice the size of the first. Time warns that there’s another incoming shipment of 66 new natural gas turbines to power it. Mind you, this is the same xAI and the same Grok that told X (formerly Twitter) users that it was “MechaHitler” and was trained to spout Nazi rhetoric at unrelated questions for a very strange week this summer.
AI usage has become deeply unconscious for many people our age, and even now, a Google search means participation in the ‘AI-world.’ Many people, like myself, abstain for intellectual reasons. I don’t think anyone paying the amount of tuition that Connecticut College costs should be trying to cheat their way through school– especially those among us paying a full 93k to do… what? Not learn anything?
Our perspective is, no matter what, a very privileged one. We are not the people who will suffer in the case of climate disasters that are already happening– worsening hurricane seasons that devastate low-income communities, heat waves that kill older folks, children, and our disabled friends, family, and neighbors– and we are not the ones suffering when the smog generated by our desire to not do our readings chokes low-income neighborhoods of color across the country. New data centers all across the country are opening up, including in Connecticut: the communities most affected by them are speaking out against these overreaches, but it’ll take all of us to turn the tide against predatory, polluting corporate interest.
We still have power, though– we have the power to abstain from these models that spin our Earth further into environmental disaster, to educate our friends and our family about the machinations behind AI-generated TikTok memes and math homework answers, to get out into the streets, and we have the power to advocate for, as Boxtown residents describe themselves, “the last of the forgotten.”
