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AI uses less water than the public thinks

californiawaterblog.com

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Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#121

Post by LinXitoW »

trollbridge wrote: post #98
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.

I have a few cows and rarely ever give them water. In the winter they get enough from snow and when it’s rainy we have a small pond that forms with a stream. They also prefer either of those to drinking well water from a cattle waterer. They are grass fed and rarely get fed stuff like corn. For for thousands of pounds of beef, I’ve barely used any water at all. Don’t notice the extra consumption on my well at all, an…

Well, I've got a small server rack and roof top solar, therefore data centers don't actually use water.

In other words, bringing up some anecdotal, hyper specific (how many meat eaters just "have a few cows"?) information says absolutely nothing about the truth of the matter, but a lot about what you believe constitutes an argument.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#122

Post by lxgr »

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…

It seems strange to draw the line at car washes.

But why stop there, and why exclude all food equally? Does somebody living a vegan lifestyle (which typically needs vastly less resources, including water, per calorie of food produced) get to wash their car in exchange for their trouble? What if I take a cold instead of a hot shower; do I then get to wash my bike every once in a while?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#123

Post by LinXitoW »

SecretDreams wrote: post #20
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.

Water I agree. C02 (which is really a tangential metric if energy consumption which will vary by energy mix) I'd want some citations. Also agree there are other ways we should pursue in parallel regarding emissions.

Obviously, there's different options and variables and bla bla bla, but considering how consolidated and highly industrialized and standardized meat production is, this data is very likely close enough to true for the wast majority of beef burgers eaten by the people complaining about AI resource consumption: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#124

Post by notJim »

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 lot of agricultural water usage (more water than AI) is for growing corn to turn into ethanol so we can add it to gasoline. It's not a small amount either, 40% of all corn in the US is used for this purpose.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#125

Post by km3r »

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…

We absolutely do not need to waste as much water as we do on agriculture. Their is more efficient watering systems, crops that do not feed humans, and inefficient crops that aren't needed. Any one of those improvements would dwarf the water usage by AI.

Heck, a better solution yet would be to charge these AI/datacenter companies enough to cover the costs for watering efficiency systems to cover their usage and then some. It's a fraction of their costs, and way better than being anti-growth.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#126

Post by 52-6F-62 »

LinXitoW wrote: post #116
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think good faith would request that the source used for these kinds of questions is not one of the VC firms at the root of these questions.

Doubly so when they use such innocuous and authoritative titling as "Our World in Data" which implies some collectivist, community-based outlook that this website is indeed not.

To wit, this page is produced in part by the Global Change Data Lab which is a team of economists, and YCombinator.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#127

Post by traderj0e »

mc32 wrote: post #97
wahnfrieden wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agricultural water usage distribution prioritizes luxury consumption and drought areas are subsidized

Rice is not a luxury for most people. It’s a staple. It uses ca. 40% of all irrigation water globally. Also cotton is not a luxury, though it also uses quite a bit of irrigation water.

But normally they grow rice where there's abundant water. There's no shortage of water globally, it's just not always where you want it. Like they want water in the middle of the California desert to grow crops.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#128

Post by lxgr »

Petersipoi wrote: post #92
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…

> have to eat to live Oh, so that's why we're growing alfalfa in the middle of deserts, flooding the fields with excess water so we can keep water rights, and then shipping the alfalfa to China. It's so we can eat!

Yes, and now please cut the non-essential philosophical discussion, the server hosting this site doesn't run on thought experiments alone either.

This comment could have been someone's hamburger!

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#129

Post by pesus »

simianwords wrote: post #96
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…

> Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats This is naive and shows lack of understanding of second order effects. Technology has been so far one of the only things to lift all boats. The last 100 years almost eliminated extreme poverty, hunger and improved material life for everyone. How? Technology - agricultural, industrial. Of course AI is going to be a rising tide but ther…

> Of course AI is going to be a rising tide but there will be a blip where people can lose jobs.

Can you provide any evidence for the supposed rising tide? So far I've seen nothing that indicates that anyone besides the people directly invested in AI companies will benefit from it. Even the best case scenario right now - software developers becoming more productive - doesn't actually benefit anyone not invested in AI companies.

People losing their jobs (and in many cases, their livelihoods/lives as a result) are also not the only negative effects.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#130

Post by ssl-3 »

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…

Grey water from where?
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