131–140 of 425 posts
As my friends in Agriculture like to point out, most of the water isn't used at all, it goes right on down the river to the ocean. Ag is second, but less than 50%.
If data center water use is such a concern, why not require that data centers invest in closed-loop cooling systems? By closed-loop, I'm talking about re-condensing evaporated water and allowing the water to cool. Cooling the water would be more expensive in hotter environments, but still achievable. These data centers seem to have wild amounts of money for investment, why not just mandate conservation requirements?
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)
> U.S. specific estimates put beef water use at 317, 441 and 808 gallons per pound of boneless beef when precipitation water is not accounted for in calculations.
So, let's just say around 400 gallons of water per pound of beef if you don't include rainfall use.
Did anyone find it weird that the author uses AI itself to perform the calculations? Seems like a very poor quality piece
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…
If you gave me a budget of how much water I could "use" water every year, and I was close to going over, I could easily pay for my annual AI use just by changing what I eat for lunch on a day or two. I could pay for years of AI use just by forgoing buying a new pair of jeans.
The water argument has always felt so intellectually dishonest to me because it's never approached from the perspective of "hey, we're using too much water, how can we conserve it?" If we approached it from that perspective, reducing AI usage would not even crack the the top 100 list of things we would do. But that's not the goal of the water argument, because it quite obviously actually has nothing to do with water.
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…
In the article it lists a data point that beer production in Arizona used more water than the data centers in Arizona. People may vehemently disagree, but we absolutely do not need beer. Would I trade beer for AI? That's an easy choice, AI every time. If you just keep track of the water to keep a person alive and the bare minimum water required for agriculture (which isn't particularly efficient in most cases), it wo…
A lot of confusion around AI water usage might stem from whether it's an open-loop or a closed-loop cooling system. e.g. an open-loop system which disposes of waste heat through evaporation is naturally going to draw a lot more water than a closed-loop system which recycles the water. Open-loop is likely cheaper to build, and importantly, it _does_ use up a lot of water that could otherwise be going to a municipality…
Open loop cooling can work fine if they use greywater. The water isn’t potable anymore, but it goes into the sky and becomes clean again. It’s all just a lack of imagination.
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!
Greater than $0 in cost of living increases for people living near these things is too much.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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