Open a tab, Ctrl V, and Enter. Seconds later, an AI chatbot spats out a homework answer or translates a frustrated email draft into corporate lingo. AI is becoming increasingly popular with teachers. When used well, it can draft emails, rubrics, assignments, or presentations, yielding educators more time with their students. But AI is not without a cost. AI data centers require so much water for cooling that our district has an obligation to restrict the routine use of chatbots in order to limit detrimental environmental effects.
Recent peer-reviewed studies have found that the average ChatGPT request uses about 1.4 milliliters of water. At OpenAI’s reported 2.5 billion prompts per day, this works out to ChatGPT using over 3.6 million liters of water per day! What’s worse is that this is a conservative estimate, as The Washington Post has found that a single 100-word email can require more than a bottle of water.
In a world with rising levels of water stress, freshwater is a precious resource. As of 2021, the United Nations Water program estimates that around 720 million people live in countries with high and critical water stress levels. This is exacerbated by the fact that only 0.5% of the planet’s freshwater is actually available for human use. AI cooling centers thus tax an already strained supply.
Teachers using AI to streamline their work or implementing it directly in their classroom have a responsibility to treat water like the scarce resource it is. Instructors must consider whether the five minutes they may save with help on an email are worth more than an entire bottle when hundreds of millions lack access to fresh water. Rather than being a default tool, teachers must use AI only where it provides a unique benefit to traditional methods, not minute timesavers. Close the tab before you drain the tap.
