A report in MIT's Technology Review raises serious questions about Google's recent estimate of its AI energy and water consumption that enterprises will need to consider too.

Figures published by Google last week minimizing the energy and water consumption of individual queries answered by its AI services are still not giving us the full picture of AI energy use, according to an article in MIT Technology Review on Thursday. The writer went on to raise further questions about AI's resource consumption that enterprise IT leaders will need to consider in their budget and ROI calculations.

The article in Technology Review highlighted the elements missing from Google's report of its AI resource consumption, a report that has already raised questions elsewhere. Those missing details make it all but impossible for enterprises to extrapolate future costs or environmental impacts.

Google's estimate for the water and electricity consumption -- five drops and a quarter of a watt-hour -- of a single text query to its AI services "doesn't reflect all queries and it leaves out cases that likely use much more energy," such as images or videos, the article's author Casey Crownhart wrote. Crownhart co-authored a much deeper dive into AI's energy footprint for Technology Review in May.