Requests for journalists covering AI and the environment

I’ve been in more conversations with journalists about AI and the environment recently and wanted to get some basic points down. These are my asks as someone who’s had a lot of specific issues with the way AI and the environment has been covered in the last few years. My main worry hasn’t been that AI’s being unfairly attacked. It’s more that readers are coming away with wildly inaccurate beliefs about where AI and data centers fit into the broader environmental picture. Getting this right matters a lot, because it’s very hard to keep people’s attention on climate and the environment for long. If they get distracted by a relatively small issue, they miss the opportunity to do a lot more good elsewhere. My ask isn’t that you present AI positively or negatively, it’s that you aim to give readers an accurate picture of its place in the environmental issue, and not leave them less informed about where the most pressing environmental problems are in their communities and the world more broadly.

These are all my requests. I go into more detail on each below:

• The big ultimate goal: readers should leave your story with a better understanding of how data centers fit into the broader environmental problems a region or the world is facing.

• Don’t ever share contextless large numbers.

• Readers should leave understanding that the energy and water used by individual prompts doesn’t meaningfully add to their personal carbon or water footprints.

• Compare data centers to other industries and commercial buildings, not household use of energy and water.

• Criticize AI specifically, but don’t imply that it’s inherently weird or bad to spend physical resources on digital products.

• Don’t imply that data centers make the computer processes inside less efficient.

• Don’t imply that data centers are new or uncommon.

• Don’t leave readers to infer for themselves that data centers have caused specific catastrophes that haven’t actually happened.

• Water-specific asks

  • Don’t report a data center’s water permit as the amount of water it will actually regularly use.

  • Don’t frame the offsite water use as “hidden” that the companies are dishonestly keeping secret.

  • Don’t use “straining local water systems” or “exacerbating drought” as synonyms for “using any water at all in a high water stress area” without clarifying what the actual harms are.

For context, this recent critical story on data center buildouts checks my boxes for great coverage. I think ...