Those Stories About AI Gobbling up 1,000x the Water a Whole Cities Uses Are False – Came from an Atlantic Writer Who Has Since Apologized

A journalist for The Atlantic made a claim in her latest book that was an exaggeration of artificial intelligence centers’ water use, and has since issued a public statement about the error.

In May 2025, Karen Hao published “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” an exposé on the company and its apparent impacts on the environment and its workforce.

The book was viewed as a success among outlets like the Financial Times, who longlisted it for “Business Book of the Year Award” in 2025. According to the Lavin Agency Speakers’ Bureau, The New York Times put it on their best seller list, calling it, “excellent and deeply researched.”

However, there was a massive error these outlets did not catch in fawning over Hao’s work: she cited a Chilean government document that listed a Google data center’s projected water usage which mistakenly used liters per second instead