Why Cooling Towers Are Used in AI-Driven Data Centers—and Why That Matters for Public Health As the world races to harness the power of artificial intelligence, the physical infrastructure behind AI is expanding at an unprecedented rate. Massive data centers—home to the servers powering models like GPT-5—are being built across the country. But with these high-performance computing facilities comes a lesser-known risk: the potential for outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease due to the use of cooling towers. High Heat, High Stakes: Why Cooling Towers? AI models require enormous computational power. Training a large language model or powering real-time AI tools demands…