AI uses less water than the public thinks • Hacker News Board

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#111

Post by Romario77 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #69

Comparing water usage of AI to agriculture and cities is a little misleading. The cities' water usage is to keep people alive with basically mandatory things, like hygiene, and drinking. Agricultural water usage is required because we have to eat to live. Don't compare something optional to something mandatory. Instead, compare AI water usage to that of optional things in a city, such as car washes and water parks. O…

one of the biggest health problems in US is obesity. 30 to 40% of the food produced in US goes to waste.

Just these two facts will tell you that while, yes, we do need food to live, but on another hand we have an abundance of food and if AI data centers use 0.05% of the water used for humans.

It's a strawman.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#112

Post by simianwords » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

cdrnsf wrote: post #25

Greater than $0 in cost of living increases for people living near these things is too much.

What a strange thing to say. This is peak NIMBYism and I urge you to reconsider. Loudoun country as an example generates ~1B USD annually [1] from taxes through data centres. That's equivalent to paying an annual salary of $40,000 to around 30k people. That's a LOT.

Do you really not consider taxes before repeating this tired argument?

[1] https://www.loudoun.gov/DocumentCenter/View/219184/General-F...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#113

Post by ebiester » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #51

testfoobar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fea…

Slopulism is effective because people are idiots and happy to eat up lies that align with their priors. Nothing to do with material conditions.

Can I rephrase it slightly?

Humans have some repeatable bugs in our wetware, and it can be predictably exploited in a way that is hard to correct. It isn't "some people" - it's all of us, and the moment we think we're immune is the moment that we are most easily affected.

Yes, even the smartest of us are idiots in some very predictable ways.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#114

Post by trollbridge » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

AustinDev wrote: post #64

loeg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute strongest complaint is that DCs consume treated, potable water, which is less abundant / easily re-created than any old non-potable source. (Of course the easy solution here is DCs just ingest / treat their own non-potable source. Or utilities charge rates sufficient to price in the externality of drawing down more potable water. The economics still work for DCs if they need to treat their own water -- t…

Why don’t data centers use gray water more often? Wouldn’t that be better for basically everyone? My guess is it’s some combination of the infrastructure not existing, the distribution being bad, and the treatment costs not penciling out. But that feels like the kind of thing municipal utilities could solve with pricing. Potable water should probably be priced differently for residential use than for big commercial/i…

Those of us by the Great Lakes would prefer that our water not get sold to other places, thanks.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#115

Post by simianwords » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

easterncalculus wrote: post #45

loeg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying any industry that brings in net new jobs with above median wages is bad? Or just ones with few employees and high additional property tax revenue?

When the new jobs number increases to four (or even three) digits people will take that more seriously.

Loudoun county generates ~1B USD from taxes annually from data centers. That's equivalent to 30k jobs paying 40k usd annually. Is that enough?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#116

Post by LinXitoW » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #78

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #15

You can go millions of prompts before you use up as much water as it took to make a single beef burger. You can go tens of thousands of prompts to match the C02 emissions. There are many legitimate concerns around AI. Water use/CO2 emissions isn’t currently one of them. Going vegan will make up your AI water consumption/CO2 Emissions many thousands of times over.

Source? Meat can be "produced" in a location where water is not as scarce. Rural areas. Datacenters "like" to grow in urban areas. This source says that a 100 prompt spends half a liter of water https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... I remember this year google reported one google search spend a drop of water (or 5 drops, around that)

https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#117

Post by simianwords » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

hansmayer wrote: post #76

loeg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying any industry that brings in net new jobs with above median wages is bad? Or just ones with few employees and high additional property tax revenue?

> that brings in net new jobs Ah yes, those invaluable tens of jobs created by DCs....

The economy is not a jobs program. Stop thinking about it that way. Think in terms of taxes generated instead.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#118

Post by jrflo » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #69

Comparing water usage of AI to agriculture and cities is a little misleading. The cities' water usage is to keep people alive with basically mandatory things, like hygiene, and drinking. Agricultural water usage is required because we have to eat to live. Don't compare something optional to something mandatory. Instead, compare AI water usage to that of optional things in a city, such as car washes and water parks. O…

A pretty easy 'optional' comparison would be golf course watering. I saw a much more detailed write up on this that I can't find now, but a quick google shows 500 billion gallons a year for US golf courses and 180 billion gallons a year for all data centers, not just AI data centers.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#119

Post by AustinDev » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:32 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #104

AustinDev wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t data centers use gray water more often? Wouldn’t that be better for basically everyone? My guess is it’s some combination of the infrastructure not existing, the distribution being bad, and the treatment costs not penciling out. But that feels like the kind of thing municipal utilities could solve with pricing. Potable water should probably be priced differently for residential use than for big commercial/i…

Using 1/4th the entire freshwater inflow into the Chesapeake Bay makes it sound enormous. That's multiple major rivers for a bit over 30 million people. I live near the Potomac and always figured the region was wet enough that water was not a concern. You have me rethinking that somewhat.

Where does your gasoline come from? Most of that usage is for the massive Exxon/etc facilities we have in Houston/Galveston to refine most of the fuel the entire nation uses.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#120

Post by badc0ffee » Fri, May 01, 2026, 7:32 PM UTC

softfalcon wrote: post #88

The data coming from the University of Calgary about the data centres they're building in Alberta, Canada seems to indicate that they're using evaporative cooling, which is very expensive water wise. The bigger concern though, is the power requirements. Which are set to double or triple the energy use of the entire Province (analogous to a State in the US). https://ucalgary.ca/sustainability/mobilizing-alberta/climat…

There are data centre projects underway that use their own natural gas generators: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/olds-mihta-askiy-data...

Air pollution, GHG and water use are concerns, but these projects will not dramatically increase the load on the electric grid.

Natural gas is cheap and abundant in Alberta, and the province (actually the whole country, via transfer payments) benefits financially from resource revenues from extracting the gas. So, these projects are generally an easy sell to the public.