Last week, Keir Starmer announced his plans to use artificial intelligence to drive “incredible change in our country”. Part of the strategy is to create “AI growth zones”, including one in Culham, Oxfordshire.

The decision caught the attention of the Guardian’s environment reporter Helena Horton.

“They’ve placed this growth zone in one of the most water-stressed areas of the UK,” Helena tells Michael Safi. “The Environment Agency has categorised that area as severely water stressed, and that’s why they’re building a new reservoir there.

“These data centres don’t just use a huge amount of energy, they also use a huge amount of water a lot of the time,” Helena says. “Because they’re processing so much data, the servers get really, really hot … so to stop the servers from overheating, they have to cool them down with water.”

But what about the argument that artificial intelligence will help solve issues around the climate, as some AI bosses have suggested?

“It’s good to have the world’s greatest thinkers thinking about climate change. But the issue is that it can be used as an excuse not to use the technology that we have now, and a lot of the technology we have to build renewables is pretty cutting-edge, the batteries that are being developed. They’re just not as kind of sexy as AI, you know?

“And it’s not an argument against AI itself. It’s just saying that if we are going to build these data centres that are required for AI, we need to be responsible with how we build them.”

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