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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

#211

Post by jerlam »

somewhatgoated wrote: post #197
da_chicken wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are alfalfa fields in central Arizona . Alfalfa basically turns water and sunlight into cellulose about as quickly as plants can. Worse, the owners of those fields are often foreign companies. That means they use tremendous amounts of water in one of the driest regions on earth, in the middle of a multiple decade drought, and the wealth these farms generate disappears overseas.

How is it legal? Shouldn’t water be the most regulated (as in protected) substance of all?

I don't know the exact situation described above, but water rights are often linked to property rights, and those are regularly treated as sacred. It doesn't matter if the owners are foreigners and the law is outdated. And those with land often have more money and power than the small government with jurisdiction, assuming the lobbyists haven't taken control of the latter.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#212

Post by bcrosby95 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #174
Petersipoi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

If we're shipping the alfalfa to China, I assume that means it's supporting some Chinese person's food source, whether they are directly eating the alfalfa, or some animal is eating it that later becomes food. If someone is flooding a field unproductively just to use up their quota of water, that is a bad thing that should be addressed. But even if you excluded that unproductive usage and compared AI water use to leg…

Lots of Colorado river water goes to supplying year around lettuce. If we didn't have lettuce they would just eat something else. Given the supply constraints of the region, "but someone is eating it" is a really bizarre argument. It can be grown elsewhere without water problems.

The southwest is basically exporting its water very cheaply in the form of agriculture. Why when its such a constrained resource here?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#213

Post by wat10000 »

AustinDev wrote: post #119
wat10000 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting! What do refineries use so much water for? I had no idea.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#214

Post by bluGill »

darth_aardvark wrote: post #194
bluGill wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well. Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them. Of course in reali…

> " latest fad for layoffs" What are you referring to here? The latest fad before AI was crypto, or maybe "the metaverse" and I don't think anyone credited those for layoffs. Before that, the latest large round of layoffs was during what, 2008? And the blame for that was correctly laid on the very real economic collapse occurring.

There have been other downturns that didn't hit tech. Not all fads coincide with a downturn and so not all get blamed on for the layoffs. Sometimes the economy is blamed correctly at well.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#215

Post by yongjik »

dylan604 wrote: post #157
tptacek wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the counterexample is a huge component of US agriculture, massively dwarfing data centers in water use, doesn't serve the core needs proposed by the top comment.

The farming water usage already exists. The data centers do not. Adding more on top of what farming is using is not going to help. We can prevent the data centers, so that's where the push back is. I'd be on board if for every data center a farm gave up the amount of water to use in that data center. Instead of carbon offsets, we'll let them purchase water offsets. Of course that's not a serious answer.

> The farming water usage already exists. The data centers do not. Adding more on top of what farming is using is not going to help. We can prevent the data centers, so that's where the push back is.

Well, to me, this sounds basically like "Jeff Bezos already exists, this school does not. Increasing the government budget to build a school here is not going to help our finance, so that's where we will push back."

(I don't think Jeff Bezos should lose all his money, but he could definitely pay more tax.)

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#216

Post by gensym »

dado3212 wrote: post #3

This is a bit of a dead horse, but the magnitude of how off the public is on this continues to amaze me. Pete Buttigieg did a Tulsa town hall a week or so ago where someone cited it taking "10,000 gallons of water just to generate one photo".[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY&t=1h5m43s

Honestly, it's weird to me how fixated both sides are on water.

People against data centers overestimate water usage, but people who think we should build as many as we can, as fast as we can seem the think that "actually they don't use that much water" somehow negates the more real issues with them.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#217

Post by impulser_ »

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…

Yeah, but data centers allow for jobs which gives people money to buy food.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#218

Post by Matticus_Rex »

SecretDreams wrote: post #140
LinXitoW wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was moreso asking you about your data on how much AI is tied to CO2...

Andy Masley does some plausible estimates here based on the data we have that puts 50 prompts per day at around 5kg CO2e/year: https://www.andymasley.com/writing/whats-the-full-hidden-cli...

The difference between an average diet and a vegan diet via Scarborough et al. 2023/Poore & Nemecek 2018 is in the realm of 1450kg CO2e/year.

Assuming those numbers, that difference is around 14,500 prompts per day, or ~5.3M prompts per year.

So unless the prompt estimates are off by more than two orders of magnitude...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#219

Post by hansmayer »

simianwords wrote: post #117
hansmayer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But it was not my argument, was ot?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#220

Post by jerlam »

satvikpendem wrote: post #164
beepbooptheory wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beer has been around for like a thousand years and we haven't decided to get rid of it. We're five years into this fever dream and everyone either literally hates AI or has been driven at least a little crazy by it. It's a pretty darn easy choice for me (and most people I imagine).

Beer is a physically addictive mind altering substance, so of course we haven't decided to get rid of it (because it literally drugs you), but people go sober all the time because they know how bad it is.

The entire United States banned beer in the 1920s, and then un-banned it in the 30s, using a process that is unthinkable today.
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