The United Nations issued the warnings in a report into the environmental impact of artificial intelligence on Thursday, which also called for regulatory changes to avert its most harmful impacts.The findings come as technology companies race to build more data centres in Australia, and less than a month after the Senate launched an inquiry into their regulation and spread.The 56-page report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health analysed the direct and indirect impacts of data centres, including their energy, water and land use, as well as carbon emissions.It found that if data centres were considered a country, they would rank 11th in the world for electricity consumption in 2025 and consume enough water to fill 1.8 million Olympic-sized pools.Global AI investments were expected to multiply 25 times over a decade, rising from $US189 billion ($264 billion) in 2023 to $US5 trillion ($77 trillion) in 2033.Their environmental impact would also skyrocket, the report found By 2030, data centres could climb to sixth in the world for energy consumption and use more than 14,000 square kilometres of land to generate electricity.The AI hubs could also generate 400 million tonnes of carbon emissions by 2030, equivalent to the UK's output in 2025, and use 9.3 trillion litres of water — enough to provide drinking water to 8.1 billion people for 1.6 years.Electronic waste could also be an environmental risk, the study said, with data centres generating up to 2.5 tonnes of it by 2030.The UN report highlights the hidden environmental costs of AI tools that have become commonplace in modern life