Of course, I don’t mean not mentioning AI at all, I just mean references to the potential negative socio-environmental impact of AI – it gets very few articles or posts, let alone mentions. Apologies for non-Brits (and Brits under 30?) who may not get the very British comedy reference in the title of this post.
This post was prompted by this article How Much Water Does ChatGPT Use? Sam Altman Reveals.
National and local politicians are keen to emphasise the need to embrace AI in the UK (as are many other countries) and quite rightly as AI can be a tremendous tool and it is going to change our lives in ways we cannot yet fully imagine. However, there is very little mention about the demands that AI will put on social, political, economic and environmental resources. In January 2025, the following statements were made
- Steve Rotheram: Mayor Steve Rotheram welcomes huge AI investment that’s set to bring up to 1,000 jobs to the Liverpool City Region
- Sir Keir Starmer: Prime Minister sets out blueprint to turbocharge AI
Unless I’ve missed something, I can’t see any reference in either of the statements to anything other than jobs, efficiency and growth (in the traditional GDP-sense)
In addition, little mention is made in the numerous LinkedIn posts by the AI community promoting the benefits of AI, of which there are many.
With that in mind, I decided to go to the horse’s mouth and ask some of the “culprits” themselves.
So I submitted the following prompts to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
1. Analyse the environmental impact of large-scale AI deployment over the next 10-20 years. Use the following link as a starting point https://techboltx.com/chatgpt-water-energy-usage-2025/
Provide recommended actions and policy initiatives for AI company executives and governments around the world for them to ensure minimal socio-economic negative impact on communities.
Provide an educated prediction of how well or badly companies and governments would implement your recommendations.
2. If the owners of [AIPlatform] are serious about their environmental and social impact on communities, I would like to suggest to [AIPlatform] developers that each prompt is suffixed by a set of environmental impact measurements such as energy, water, trees etc. This would highlight to users their impact. How realistic would this be taken into account? Or where would I be able to put forward this suggestion?
3. User feedback would not need to be complicated/overloaded – it could be simplified even into a scale for each query or a regular update via email, in the user profile or an automated notification in their account every week, month etc
4. Create a short summary that I can submit via the support agent
The results were more than interesting – initial key points/summaries are provided below with links to each platform’s own generated blog post and the publicly available chats:
ChatGPT: Deploying AI at scale over the next 10–20 years will likely bring both powerful benefits and substantial environmental costs – including steep energy consumption, excessive water use, supply-chain impacts, and uneven social burden
ChatGPT article link including link to full chat: https://partneringforpurpose.org.uk/2025/07/chatgpt-should-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-show-their-environmental-impact/.
Claude: The environmental impact of large-scale AI deployment is accelerating rapidly, with each ChatGPT query using about 0.34 watt-hours of electricity and the equivalent of a teaspoon of water. When scaled to billions of daily queries, this creates massive resource demands. The International Energy Agency estimates global data center electricity demand could double between 2022 and 2026, driven largely by AI adoption.
The most concerning projections suggest that by 2028, AI in the US could consume 300 terawatt-hours annually and require 720 billion gallons of water just for cooling. This represents a fundamental sustainability challenge that requires immediate attention.
Claude article link including link to full chat: https://partneringforpurpose.org.uk/2025/07/claude-the-hidden-environmental-cost-of-ai-time-for-transparency/
Gemini: The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the next 10-20 years is projected to have a significant and escalating environmental impact, primarily driven by its immense energy and water demands, alongside a growing electronic waste problem. While the initial provided link was inaccessible, a comprehensive review of current research offers a clear picture of these challenges.
Gemini article link including link to full chat: https://partneringforpurpose.org.uk/2025/07/gemini-ais-carbon-footprint-navigating-the-environmental-and-social-impact-of-a-digital-future/