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Tom Shaw, a software developer and content creator, examines three common ideas about data centers’ consumption of water and energy and their employment opportunities, drawing on examples from Meta facilities. The figures presented remain descriptions of the company’s experiences, not a general judgment about all data center operators.
Meta uses closed-loop liquid cooling in most of its new AI-optimized data centers to handle rising heat while reducing water and space consumption. The company says a reinforcement-learning trial reduced cooling-fan energy consumption by 20% and water consumption by 4% at one of its data centers.