AI has come for Arizona’s water

AA hulking gray giant rises from the desert. Inside, engineers create the force behind our phones and computers and appliances, our streaming services and search engines and chatbots and vibe-coded apps and websites. The complex is simultaneously massive and squat, dwarfed by the mountains that surround it, and it is endless. I drive past one building, and then another, and then the ground opens up where construction crews have dug up the earth so a third building can rise. There is a parking lot, and then another, and then another. There is an empty lot on the other side of the street, full of cars and the occasional food truck to feed the thousands of laborers who are busy transforming this expanse of desert into an industrial park.