many of the most significant environment-related risks, among which we have, with good reason, included touristification, on the other hand, they and the technologies that will form their backbone may conversely even risk generating even more traumatic environmental problems such as those related to water consumption.76 Indeed, Artificial Intelligence is one of the most disruptive technologies of our time, and one that will almost certainly be incorporated into every new technology of the future, but behind its exponential growth is an oftenoverlooked issue related precisely to water consumption. Artificial intelligence has certainly had a positive impact in work, communication and various areas of society, and many more we expect it to have as well for the control and management of important issues equally connected by a direct thread with environmental protection as are, precisely, those related to tourism management. The data centers in which the servers that process the large number of queries that are made, every minute, to services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard produce heat, just as ordinary computers need to expel hot air from the processor. To continue operations, these servers need to maintain a certain temperature, hence the use of water to keep them from overheating. Maneuvers to limit and rationalize water consumption could be several: for example, relocating AI data centers to locations with lower temperatures so as to avoid excessive water use to cool rooms; implementing air or closedloop cooling systems to reduce evaporation; using non potable water sources or recycled water; and developing data centers powered by renewable energy. And take action at the legislative level, with regulations and laws that protect water resource withdrawals and promote more sustainable practices. The challenge, therefore, now more than ever, is also to make data center projects sustainable without the data center impacting water use for residential purposes, especially in areas where water is scarce and needs to be preserved, and this needs to be severely taken into account in the analysis of the issues that concern us here. 76 For a recent and interesting reading of these issues see J. Rifkin, Planet Water. Rethinking our home in the universe, Mondadori 2024. 185 SMART CITIES AND TOURISM
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