Moment of reckoning: AI is deepening water crisis, not just through consumption but its role in conflict

In his foreword to Paul Farmer’s classic Pathologies of Power, Amartya Sen writes, “The asymmetry of power can indeed generate a kind of quiet brutality.” However, in the case of the recent war between the United States, Israel and Iran, the skewed power imbalance has been exploited with deafening impunity. And technological advancements in artitificial intelligence (AI) is turbocharging the military conflict.

AI, which can and will have far-reaching impacts on human lives by transforming sectors such as healthcare, economic growth, transportation, agriculture, cyber security, scientific discovery, financial services and climate mitigation, is being used for intelligence gathering and analysis, speeding up attack capabilities by identifying, suggesting and prioritising targets and guiding missiles among other logistical and office support in the battlefield.   

Moreover, AI-generated fake images and videos that appear extremely realistic have spread across social media like wildfire and are being used to make false and misleading claims, all the while accruing millions of views online and generating revenue for the online creators. The misinformation erodes the trust of people in verified sources of information, institutions, posing threat to public safety and democratic processes by breeding widespread chaos and violence.     

The growth of AI is also highly resource-intensive. To run the AI models (which are getting larger and more complex), computing, memory and cooling systems are integral, all of which require enormous amounts of energy.

Divya Mahajan wrote in The Conversation, “Modern AI data centers can use as much electricity as a small city.” The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that global electricity demand from data centres could double between 2022 and 2026, fuelled in part by AI adoption.

IEA estimated that in 2024, the electricity generation for global data centres could have produced around 182 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and they were responsible for 560 billion litres of water consumption in 2023. Enormous amounts of water are consumed to keep the hot servers in AI data centres cool. Water is also used to generate electricity for these systems.

Dutch academic Alex de Vries-Gao put this in perspective by suggesting in his 2025 paper that AI systems may have a carbon footprint equivalent to that of New York City in 2025, while their water footprint could be in the range of the global annual consumption of bottled water.

The rate at which AI is burgeoning, the energy emissions of the data centres will soon be competing with the aviation and cement production sectors in terms of CO2 output in the coming years, adding to the greenhouse effect causing global warming.

The paradox is inescapably cruel and inhuman: AI consuming gallons of water, which is already in short supply, is used in warfare to attack water infrastructure, as happened in Iran this week. When water desalination plants in Iran and other Middle East countries are blown up, severe water crisis is inevitable in an already-parched water deficit region. It will create an immediate scarcity of drinking water. This, tied with the collapse of sanitation systems, will lead to public health emergencies of waterborne diseases. Agriculture will be affected, leading to loss of livelihoods and food insecurity.

This deadly combination of factors will ultimately lead to forced displacement of millions of people from the region, fermenting regional conflicts. As per UNICEF, water-related crises, including severe scarcity, drought and flooding, events that are exacerbated by climate change, are already driving massive global displacement, with up to 700 million people potentially displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030.

When Sam Altman, chief executive of tech company OpenAI, defended the ballooning power consumption of AI by comparing it with the amount of food and energy consumed in raising humans, one is shocked by the profound disinterest of such entrepreneurs in the lived realities of the people on Earth, a majority of whom lack the basic amenities to lead a life of dignity, while investing heavily in searching for extraterrestrial life. In the name of technological advancements, one cannot turn a blind eye to the pressing issue of increasing water-based inequalities, discrimination and water justice.

Benga Mausi, a resident of the saline-prone coastal belt of Puri in Odisha, does not have access to potable water because the groundwater in her village has pervasive seawater intrusion owing to sea-level rise. She is paying the price for the carbon and water footprints of technology corporations that are raking in money and are further investing to advance AI. And, this same AI is being used to kill people, spread misinformation, attack infrastructures and cause environmental pollution in military conflicts. It is a vicious cycle where the vulnerable continue to pay the price for the environmental cost of technological advancements, which supposedly will serve humanity, and yet continue to be the slave of the elite clique. 

AI can be developed in a sustainable manner and can play a role in making the most of new green and renewable energy systems, or finding ways to minimise carbon emissions to improve decision-making processes for governments across the globe. But in fact, AI is being used by warmongers to settle scores in an ever-increasing partisan and unequal world where technology was supposed to be the “great equaliser”.

In his book, Farmer forces us to consider the question of “preventable morbidity and escapable mortality” that ravages humanity in this age of exponential advancements in science and technology and economic affluence. This is the crucial moment of reflection, reckoning and action.  

Sankalpa Satapathy is an assistant professor, Institute of Public Health Kalyani, West Bengal. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.