AI may feel invisible. Just a few keystrokes and a quick reply from a chatbot. But behind the scenes, it is powered by enormous data centers running constantly.

Researchers say that training a single large language model, like ChatGPT, can use as much electricity as 100 U.S. homes use in an entire year. It sounds extreme, but it is not an exaggeration. The energy needed to process, train, and run AI models adds up quickly. And it is not just electricity. Data centers generate heat, and all that equipment has to stay cool. That requires water. And lots of it.

“When it is being trained, what is happening is it is a huge amount of data that is going in to make it what it is that you interact with,” says Keyona Meeks, an AI strategist. She helps organizations develop AI responsibly and track

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