The Digital Drought: How Your ChatGPT Habit Is Draining America's Water Supply

Exclusive investigation reveals AI's hidden thirst—and why your next email might cost more than you think.

TL;DR: Microsoft's Iowa data centers consumed 11.5 million gallons in a single month training GPT-4. Each ChatGPT query now uses one-fifteenth of a teaspoon of water, but scale that to billions of daily prompts and we're facing an environmental crisis hiding in plain sight.

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🏜️ The Numbers Big Tech Hoped You'd Never Connect

While you've been asking ChatGPT to write your emails, here's what's been happening behind the scenes:

The Training Phase (The Real Water Bomb): GPT-4's training alone consumed 11.5 million gallons in July 2022—enough to supply every resident of West Des Moines for an entire day. Microsoft's global water usage spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 to 1.7 billion gallons.