The Cogito Brief

Good morning,

The AI news cycle moves so fast that it can be difficult to keep up. One day it's a new model release. The next day it's a billion users, a new data center announcement, or another company finding ways to use AI in its business.

Today, I want to walk through a few stories that caught my attention and explain why they matter.

From last week’s email, it appears that 60% of you would trust AI to give you health advice, and I can’t blame you. There’s some incredible information that you can get from these tools. I’d always recommend health professionals, but for simple or non-life-threatening inquiries, tools like Microsoft Copilot can be a helpful starting point.

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ChatGPT has reportedly become the fastest app ever to reach 1+ billion active monthly users. This number is little misleading because this doesn’t mean there are 1 billion people using ChatGPT…it just means there are that many active accounts.

And I’m not surprised. The adoption of ChatGPT and other LLMs in the workforce is absurd. You cannot scroll on LinkedIn or look through your work email without hearing or seeing a mention of AI. We are living through the adoption period in real time.

Nonetheless, it’s extremely impressive and important to note because of how quick the adoption is going. It’s becoming more important for you to not only learn ChatGPT, but to also understand this technology.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss how you can use ChatGPT to learn about ChatGPT, AI, and other related topics. I’ll also have another YouTube video posted tomorrow along with the link in the bio for you all to use.

You are in the right place, at the right time. I have a ton of great things in store for us in the future.

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Why are water and data centers often linked together?

If I asked you what a data center needs to operate, you'd probably say electricity. And you'd be right. These facilities use massive amounts of power because they are filled with computers running around the clock.

What you may not realize is that all of those computers generate heat. Think about how warm your laptop gets after you've been using it for a while. Now imagine a building with thousands of computers all working at the same time.

That heat has to be removed somehow. If the equipment gets too hot, it can become less efficient, experience performance issues, or even stop working altogether. That’s where cooling systems come in.

Many data centers use water-based cooling systems to help keep temperatures under control. Water is very effective at absorbing and transferring heat, which makes it a useful tool for cooling large facilities. The larger the data center, the more cooling it typically needs.

This becomes even more important when you start thinking about AI. Every time you use ChatGPT, generate an image, or ask an AI model a question, powerful computers are working behind the scenes to process your request. As more people use AI, companies need more computing power to keep up.

That means more data centers are being built. And with more data centers comes greater demand for electricity, land, and in some cases, water.

So when you hear people talking about data centers and water, they are really talking about a bigger question. How do we continue building the technology of the future while responsibly managing the resources that communities depend on today?

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McDonald’s is testing a new AI system called ArchIQ, or “Archy,” to help take drive-thru orders. They've been down this road before.

A previous test with IBM ended badly, with enough wrong orders that the program got scrapped entirely. So why try again? Because the pressure to cut costs and move faster isn't going away. And AI, when it actually works, can do both.

You may not notice it initially, but here’s how it can help:

This is how adoption usually goes. It's not a dramatic overnight switch. It's quiet pilots in places you already go, slowly becoming the new normal. The drive-thru is just the beginning.

The main takeaway is simple: AI is here to stay and it could become one of the biggest technology shifts of our lifetime. It’s powering the tools you use, driving demand for new infrastructure, and quietly making its way into businesses you interact with every day.

Tomorrow, we'll look at how you can use ChatGPT to learn about AI, understand new developments, and stay ahead of the curve.

Zack Wright