Big Tech’s thirst for water is sparking a global resistance
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After ChatGPT was released in November 2022, the tech industry was quick to herald the chatbot as the marker of a new wave of technological progress. As companies pushed to create more powerful AI models, the water demand of their ambitions took a while to become clear. In April 2023, a University of California research paper estimated that training the initial version of ChatGPT required 185,000 gallons of water — and that for every extended conversation or drafted email, users were effectively pouring a bottle of water down the drain. It became an early warning sign as companies pitched chatbots as universal tools that could replace educators, lawyers, and even friends or partners.
As public concern grew, Google and OpenAI countered with their own figures, suggesting that querying one of their chatbots used mere drops of water. Independent researchers were not impressed, arguing the companies were taking a narrow view of the water required to power and cool increasingly large data centers.
A hyperscale data center can suck up between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day, comparable to the amount used by a city of 10,000 to 50,000 people. In his new book, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires, writer Paris Marx examines how local communities are resisting the growing demand for water to cool data centers.
Dispatches from the ground 🌏︎
This week, Apple caps iPhone purchases in India ahead of the Duo launch, Chinese tech giants place Nvidia orders valued at over $35 billion, and severe PHP flaws knock government websites offline.
South Asia
Ahead of the iPhone Duo launch on October 23, Apple India is capping the number of iPhones people can buy at one time from its website to two units. When Duo preorders went live in India on October 16, they sold out within the hour. Unlike in the U.S., Indian customers don’t have the option to make a walk-in purchase. Meanwhile, gray market sellers are supposedly selling iPhones from markets like Singapore and Dubai at a $500 markup.
— Ananya Bhattacharya from Mumbai
China
Chinese tech giants ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have placed orders worth more than $35 billion for over 3 million Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, according to a Reuters exclusive published this week.
The chips are less powerful than Nvidia’s most advanced AI processors but comply with U.S. export controls. Chinese companies primarily want them to run AI models rather than train them, the report says.
Nvidia reportedly warned its Chinese customers they might receive just 5% to 10% of their requested orders as the demand was more than expected. The Chinese government was reported to have restricted major tech firms from purchasing Nvidia chips in order to boost domestic chips sales and also cut reliance on American firms.
— Kinling Lo from Tapei
United States
Government websites in the U.S., Europe, and Asia went offline on Wednesday as agencies scrambled to protect their systems after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language. The vulnerabilities in the PHP scripting language were discovered with an AI tool, and tech firms warned that hackers were already using AI to exploit the flaws. “Successful exploitation could allow attackers to take control of affected servers, steal sensitive data, and deface the websites running on them,” cybersecurity firm Wiz said, adding that 70% of all websites in the world were likely affected. The underlying flaws, which it said were among the “most severe … in software history,” had been present for decades. Advanced AI models had helped discover them, it said. AI tools have also reduced the time taken to weaponize such vulnerabilities, with poorer nations and small businesses particularly at risk.
— Rina Chandran from San Francisco
Stat of the Day
— The total number of car-carrying cargo ships Chinese EV maker BYD will expand its fleet to by 2029, up from eight today. While American and European rivals like Tesla continue to rely entirely on renting third-party carriers to export from China, BYD is building its own private maritime shipping network to insulate itself from soaring freight costs and volatile charter markets.
You’re invited: Does AI really change the world?
Today, join Rest of World for a conversation with Kentaro Toyama, a professor at the University of Michigan and the author of Geek Heresy. The book looks at how AI is upending our assumptions about tech and social change. We’ll explore his famous “Law of Amplification,” the idea that technology merely magnifies human intent, and examine whether persuasive models and autonomous agents are breaking that rule by replacing human capacity altogether. We’ll wrap up with an audience Q&A.
Friday, October 23, 9 a.m. ET / 2 p.m. U.K. / 6:30 p.m. IST.
Virtual event
And one more thing...
The U.S. has banned civilian federal agencies from using Chinese startup DeepSeek’s AI tools over national security concerns. But viewing Chinese tech purely through a defense lens carries sharp trade-offs: As biotech consultant Ruby Wang told Rest of World, China is staging a parallel “DeepSeek moment” in medicine, and applying security-first restrictions to biotech risks cutting off global patients from cheaper, life-saving therapies.
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