Understand why technological advancements pose an additional challenge for the planet's future.

When you plug your computer into the wall socket, the electrical energy flows, flows, flows, and then you turn it on. Let's open it up to see what happens inside. The electrical energy enters until it reaches the processor chip. And it's this electricity that makes the computer work.

Inside the tiny chip are several microscopic transistors, which act like switches. If energy passes through it, it's one. If it doesn't, it's zero. Zero, one, zero, one, zero are the equations that make up everything in your computer. This causes the chip to get very hot. And there's a cooling system for this chip. In other words, it's a lot of electrical energy passing through it all the time.

When you put your computer on your lap, you notice it gets hot. Then you decide to go to a streaming service and play a movie that's on the internet. But where is that video you're watching on your computer? Most likely in one of the world's largest data centers, in Silicon Valley, in the United States . It's like a giant library – full of shelves. Or rather, a giant brain that processes all the data you'll later click on and find on the internet. It's basically shelves and shelves of computers, one on top of the other. They're behind bars, in the dark. Everything there is secret.

A health insurance plan, for example, stores your registration information there. And this data communicates, for example, with the hospital to authorize your surgery. Each company has its own data. This data center is where parts of the data from all companies are located. They are immense mountains of information. This is why they talk so much about data centers consuming so much energy. Christopher Wellise works in a data center.

“The chips in these computers get very hot when electricity passes through them. And we need to remove that heat,” says Christopher Wellise, vice president of sustainability at Equinix.

Removing heat is called cooling. Just like your computer's chip is cooled by that little fan, but for a system of this size, you need a lot of air conditioning.

“This is the cooling system. Cold air is pushed through the corridors of computers. On the other side of the building, it arrives hot, is drawn in, and cooled again,” explains Christopher Wellise.

It's almost ironic that the most talked-about energy expenditure these days, the heart of cutting-edge technological development, the pinnacle of Silicon Valley, is air conditioning. But these computers produce so much heat that air conditioning alone isn't enough. There's also a system of pipes through which cold water flows to cool things down even further. After passing through the computers, this water heats up and is discarded. All this to keep the data center always running, so you can play videos on your computer. The data center visited by the Jornal Nacional team alone consumes as much energy as it would power a city of 80,000 inhabitants.

Data centers are already responsible for almost 5% of the United States' energy consumption. In Ireland, it's already 20%. Aquifers in Chile are under threat from the expansion of technology. And this is just the beginning. In the next five years, energy use by data centers is expected to more than double. They will consume more electricity than Japan. Because something much bigger is coming. In a museum in New York, there are no paintings on the walls, but a video on a constant loop.

“This video is to explore the question: what is a creator? I transformed my digital avatar into an artist,” says artist Lu Yang.

Doku is who Lu Yang is in the virtual world. But in the next room, the avatar Doku himself created his own video. Artificial intelligence created a work of art.

“I started experimenting with artificial intelligence three years ago, but it wasn’t good enough. Last year, I realized it was good enough to use. I can have an idea and the images appear in front of me,” says Lu Yang.

Meredith Broussard writes about artificial intelligence and is a professor at New York University.

"We forget that, in reality, it's all mathematics. A computer is a machine that performs calculations. The more calculations it does, the more energy it will use."

The energy consumption of artificial intelligence follows the same logic as data centers. Except that it generates even more heat and requires even more cooling.

“The more powerful the computer, the more water it consumes to cool down. Many data centers in the United States are being built in vulnerable communities, and they suck up all the water that people need, and there are starting to be water shortages in the taps,” says Meredith Broussard.

Small towns across the country are grappling with the question: what will happen with the opening of a new data center?

“I wake up every morning and this is the first thing that comes to my mind. How are we going to protect our water for future generations?” asks a farmer.

This is just one example. And in Saint Charles, Missouri, small farmers are trying to block the construction.

"How can you risk building something so dangerous here?" the farmer asks.

"Every question you ask ChatGPT is like throwing away a bottle of water," says Meredith Broussard.

At the California data center, Christopher Wellise, head of the sustainability department, went up to the roof with the Jornal Nacional team to show them that it is covered in solar panels.

"These here power some parts of the company's office," Christopher Wellise points out.

But for the data center itself, that power is not enough.

“Currently, 96% of all our energy comes from renewable sources. Our goal is to reach 100% by 2030,” says Christopher Wellise.

But is that true? Fernando Valle is an energy sector analyst in New York:

“No. They are indeed paying for renewable energy credits to encourage greater renewable generation. But the energy they are actually using is the same energy that comes to you and me,” says Fernando Valle, executive director of energy at Hedgeye Risk Management.

The energy consumed by the data center comes from the grid. The same grid used by all residents of California. This grid is primarily supplied by natural gas and coal-fired power plants – which generate half of the United States' energy – and a portion by wind and solar power. All these sources feed into the same grid. When it comes to distribution, it's impossible to know where the energy came from.

"There's no way to differentiate between the electron that's here and the one that went to my house," says Fernando Valle.

Data centers and technology companies sign long-term contracts with renewable energy companies. They pay them to produce more. But, in the end, it's all mixed together.

The Trump administration ordered a halt to all new wind turbines and solar farm construction. It largely depends on companies to continue generating renewable energy.

"If you were born in this era, you can't avoid artificial intelligence. You are part of the world," says Lu Yang.

“The promise of new technologies is that we would have more prosperity. But you can count on your fingers the number of companies that are taking advantage of this prosperity. Ordinary people are losing their jobs. Artificial intelligence hasn't delivered on its promises and still uses a lot of clean water that people could drink,” says Meredith Broussard.

This is the dilemma of our time. To solve it, the United States wants to increase energy production even further and has decreed the return of nuclear power plants. That's what we'll see in Saturday's episode (8).