Water Usage: Avocado v AI

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Everyone is panicking about how much water AI data centers use.

[00:00:04]Compared to your avocado, it's a rounding error.

[00:00:07]One ChatGPT query uses about half a milliliter of water.

[00:00:11]One kilogram of Chilean avocados from Petorca takes 1,280 L, three times the global average, and about 2 and 1/2 million ChatGPT prompts.

[00:00:23]Petorca is a province north of Santiago.

[00:00:25]It used to grow wine. Then the water rights were privatized, the climate changed, and the avocado growers arrived.

[00:00:32]Chile is now in its 13th year of drought. Petorca's reservoirs have dropped 40%.

[00:00:39]The river runs dry, the wells run dry, the taps run dry.

[00:00:44]Families now buy drinking water from tanker trucks, about 50 L per person per day.

[00:00:50]The orchards stay irrigated because the orchards are legal.

[00:00:55]They hold water rights granted under a 1981 Chilean law that turned water into a tradable private asset.

[00:01:02]Whoever holds the paper holds the river.

[00:01:05]So, the question isn't how much water an avocado uses.

[00:01:09]It's who gets to use it.

[00:01:11]In Petorca, that's whoever bought the rights when the rules were written, not the people who live there.