151–160 of 171 posts
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Are they? What has gotten better because of LLMs?
Search e.g
Now when I use an internet search, the top answer is an AI guess/approximation to the result and can be completely inaccurate. I have to ignore that and move onto the traditional results and hope that they aren't A.I. slop websites.
LLMs have degraded the internet and search.
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You'd have to look locally at individual datacenter projects then and not be against all of them. If it's really the case that a local municipality grants a new datacenter to be built that already has a stressed water supply, the people in the area should complain, and if nothing is done then we can be mad at just that ONE datacenter/company. Not the entire industry. But I just don't see that happening. Noone is goin…
Correct, yes, aggregate numbers aren’t too meaningful. I mentioned it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434170 Though you can also be mad at the industry as a whole, an industry where leaders scream as loud as possible how they will make your life worse. I think it’s perfectly justified. And DCs are a perfect fit for that, you have a huge ominous monolith to point at that nobody wants to have around them
This is exactly my problem. I'm not saying you're wrong about this in any way. But your (and many others) core problem with datacenters is not actually the water use. The water argument is just a strawman to increase environmental legitimacy, and thats a really bad and harmful practice (I do realize that this might seem minor given incompetent political leadership that spews uninformed drivel all day, but coherency and correctness still matter!)
The water argument is simply never helpful. If water is scarce locally, then let local administration reject datacenter projects for exactly that reason. If they fail to do that, fix/campaign against the local administration (because that's where the problem is at). But blanket arguing against datacenter buildout because of water usage is just bad-faith campaigning, and it is gonna hurt credibility elsewhere.
Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…
The problem is that these comparisons do not have equal utility. Trying to compare them to AI datacenter consumption is equivalent to justifying a gambling habit on a fixed income because groceries consume plenty of dollars as well.
That's just your opinion, though. I would prefer a purely vegerarian society with advanced AI that can cure cancer or discover new maths to society with meat and no AI.
Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…
> Livestock: ~730 billion gal This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.
If a vegetarian, who became a vegetarian because of the high environmental impact of meat production, berates you for defending data center water use, would that convince you to change your mind?
What about a vegan, who also stopped flying and doesn't drive, and is organizing a protest to shut down the local golf course?
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>Almonds provide a real utility for humans: food. Let's do not act as if there wasnt other food, a lot of it actually. Meanwhile LLMs aren't that easy to replace, they're biggest human achievement up to date.
"Meanwhile LLMs aren't that easy to replace" A BBS chatbot from the 80s (LISA) was almost as good as modern LLMs and that was just based on key words. So, uh, yea, chatbots are very, VERY easy to replace.
Lol. This is what anti-AIs actually believe!
Is anybody working on using all this waste heat for desalination? I think cold seawater can be used for the external loop, through a heat exchanger where it would meet the heated pure water from the internal cooling loops. This would cause evaporation of the salt water which could be captured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Multi-stage_flash...
Waste heat from data centers is significantly below the temperature that desalination systems typically use. While a desalination system could theoretically use data center waste heat, it would require far higher capital costs than other desalination systems.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00119...
But fail to consider that "AI" adds to those sources and raises total water consupmtion
Is total water consumption important
Perhaps the comparision that readers will make is not (a) existing non-"AI" water consumption versus "AI" water consumption but (b) total water consumption without the additonal "AI" data centers versus total water consumption with additional "AI" data centers. IOW, "before" versus "after"
Will readers ignore (b) and only think about (a)
It's the same response from HN commenters every time: compare "AI" data centers to some other water consuming activity
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You don't see the issues with your line of thinking? You get to absolve yourself of the responsibilities of your choice because "someone is making you" use it? How can you say you value almonds more than LLM slop when your individual choices don't reflect those values?
They live in a country where you are not allowed to change jobs.
Also telling people to simply leave is very anti-human + anti-democratic. Workers should have the right to have a say in the company, they are the ones that do the work after all.
Telling people to simply leave just favors those with money compared to those without. There's also the whole you know... losing access to healthcare when quitting jobs; also IDK if you've been in a coma the last 3 years but the tech winter is still ongoing, LLM induced mania hasn't resulted in downstream companies hiring more.
Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless. Annual withdrawals (2015) - Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal - Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal - Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal - Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal - Aquaculture: ~2.76…
> Livestock: ~730 billion gal This is a good illustration how cursed the datacenter topic has become when people go out of their minds on computer cooling while continuing to eat meat which lets be perfectly clear - is mostly for entertainment purposes. I had someone berate me for defending datacenter water use and their last post was literally a cheese burger.
Are they stupid or something?
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There would need to be some articulable upside to data centers, though. Even if we agree there should be less livestock, I don't see how that has any bearing on the data centers topic.
I assume HN runs on machines in a datacenter. The servers that serve my business also reside in a datacenter. I see lots of upsides to datacenters, and they've been around long before they were controversial.