00:01FMT senior journalist, Minderjit Kaur, recalls mornings when the sun was something to run under, not something to flee from.
00:08She remembers as a child, playing in open fields, returning home with uniforms stained by mud and sweat.
00:15Today, she says children return in the crisp uniforms they went to school in,
00:20because their playgrounds have shifted from fields to screens.
00:24For Minder, this is where the story begins to turn.
00:27She says we rarely connect our digital habits to climate change.
00:32Yet, the infrastructure powering our online lives is energy-intensive.
00:37Behind every search, every scroll, every social media post, every AI response, lies a network of data centers.
00:45And those systems are thirsty, Minder says.
00:48Large centers can consume nearly 19 million liters of water a day, enough for a town of 50,000 people.
00:55They operate in the 10 to 100 megawatt range, with every 10 megawatts capable of powering up to 10,000
01:02homes.
01:04Cybersecurity and AI expert Selvakumar Manikam tells Minder that AI could account for 3% of the global energy demand
01:11by 2030.
01:12Yet, transparency is minimal.
01:16Selvakumar wants policymakers to set limits, enforce disclosure, and shift energy-intensive processes to off-peak hours.
01:24He also calls for greater investment in efficient algorithms.
01:28With CAPS, companies will be forced to optimize operations or invest in better infrastructure, he says.
01:36Technology is not the villain, Minder says.
01:39It has connected us, informed us, and improved our lives.
01:43But without clear rules, its thirst will quietly worsen the climate crisis.
01:48As Minder says herself.
01:50The last thing we want is for intervention to take place only when it is too late.
01:56By then, the impact would be irreversible, and the heat will no longer just be something we feel.
02:04It would be something we failed to act on.
02:07For the full opinion piece, read Let's Make AI Less Thirsty by FMT Senior Journalist Minerjit Kaur on FMT.
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