Empire of AI Is Wildly Misleading About AI Water Use
Karen Hao's book Empire of AI contains multiple significant errors in its treatment of AI water use. The most egregious is a 4,500x overstatement of a data center's water draw relative to a nearby city of 88,000 people. Hao also conflate…
- 01Hao also conflates water withdrawal with water consumption, reporting 1.1–1.7 trillion gallons as consumed when the cited study's actual consumption figure is 100–158 billion gallons—just 10% of that number, with 90% returned to the source.
- 02Additional claims about harm to water access in the US and Uruguay lack supporting evidence and misrepresent local water ratios.
- 03The author updated the book in December 2025 to correct the two primary errors after the blogger's public critique.
Karen Hao's book Empire of AI contains multiple significant errors in its treatment of AI water use. The most egregious is a 4,500x overstatement of a data center's water draw relative to a nearby city of 88,000 people. Hao also conflates water withdrawal with water consumption, reporting 1.1–1.7 trillion gallons as consumed when the cited study's actual consumption figure is 100–158 billion gallons—just 10% of that number, with 90% returned to the source. Additional claims about harm to water access in the US and Uruguay lack supporting evidence and misrepresent local water ratios. The author updated the book in December 2025 to correct the two primary errors after the blogger's public critique.
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