The pro AI UK government has advised citizens to 'Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems' to help reduce water consumption during national drought

An artistic 3D render of the inside of a data centre, with many network cables criss-crossing the server racks. The entire image is bathed in blue light. — (Image credit: Petrovich9 via Getty Images)

Folks in the UK are doing it tough right now with droughts sweeping the country. The situation has gotten so bad the government has declared it a "nationally significant incident." Alongside a release with advice on how residents can help save water. Some of these suggestions are great ideas but included amongst them is advice so out of touch I'm beginning to think they found it on a series of tubes.

Tom's Hardware spotted the odd suggestion from the UK government which instructs citizens to "Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems." It's especially odd advice coming from a government that wants to go all in on AI and other notoriously water-hungry technologies. It falls in line with the usual key tactic for many large groups when it comes to environmental accountability: shift blame and responsibility to the individual despite their efforts being miniscule in comparison.

It's a lot like what many countries, including my own, experienced with recycling. We were taught how to stringently separate waste and diligently dispose of it correctly. Almost all of the waste sneakily still went to regular landfill as we didn't have facilities to process it. We were told we were saving the world while a billionaire flew over in a jet doing more damage than I could with a million plastic straws. More plastics were sold because we thought we were recycling them. Don't forget to delete those emails.

This advice from the UK government rings the same, because not only will deleting your data be very unlikely to help with water conservation, it could wind up doing the opposite. It's no lie that datacentres are high users of water, storing your data isn't something that uses much of it. Instead, water is likely used in evaporative cooling situations which are more likely to be triggered by more computing intensive acts. Things like generative AI processes, not holding a few jpegs.

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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

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