Why do AI data centers use so many resources?

With the AI boom, construction of new data centers has skyrocketed, and not without consequence — some communities that count these facilities as neighbors are now facing water shortages and strained power supplies. While tech's data center footprint has been growing for decades, generative AI has seemingly shifted the impacts of these operations toward the catastrophic. What exactly makes these new data centers such a burden on the environment and existing infrastructure, and is there anything we can do to fix it? ChipsThe industry believes AI will work its way into every corner of our lives, and so needs to build sufficient capacity to address that anticipated demand. But the hardware used to make AI work is so much more resource-intensive than standard cloud computing facilities [...]