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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

#201

Post by topham »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #136
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

"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)."

Careful, your bias is showing.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#202

Post by cachencarry »

tt24 wrote: post #156
trollbridge wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry but that isn’t your water. Do you own the Great Lakes? The Great Lakes are part of the United States and Canada. If the United States or Canada would like to repurpose the water within them for some better use then that sucks for you

You’d have to convince a majority of the members of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Good luck with that.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#203

Post by rsoto2 »

km3r wrote: post #125
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 s…

Yeah people aren't mad about datacenters because they are "anti growth"

They don't want to see their local resources depleted and, no, this isn't some fantasyland where corporations will do anything "for the greater good" that isn't in line with their pockets.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#204

Post by adrr »

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.

Depends on the prompt. Do a video prompt and one 30 second video will use as much electricity as running your microwave on high for 15 minutes.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#205

Post by shimman »

ssl-3 wrote: post #146
shimman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot o the confusion around data centers is that these companies purposely hide this information from the public. We already know how damaging normal data centers are: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/the-dalles... Citizens had to sue their town to force them to give up water usage, something Google was adamant about hiding from the public. When there is no accountability, trust plummets. There is n…

A lot of us work for and do business with companies that purposefully hide information from the public. That doesn't seem to be an unusual state of affairs at all; it instead seems like a very normal way of doing things.

Oh yeah it's totally normal for neoliberal America to fuck over the public at every opportunity for private corporate gain. Not going to disagree with that at all.

But if you think this is honestly a GOOD thing, you have deep anti-human sentiments.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#207

Post by xvedejas »

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?

It's quite regulated in the western US, but usually in the direction of guaranteeing water to incumbent landowners. Some people end up with really strong water rights, and they can be wasteful if the law helps them do so.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#208

Post by rsoto2 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #152
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…

This is an extremely frustrating angle to take because what you're implying is that anytime anyone comes up with any system that takes water they should go in front of a panel of experts (seniors) who get to decide whether their water usage is for an "approvable" purpose. Now I don't like water going to Golf courses either but to me even the intermediate solution is to price water accurately. Barring that, long term…

let's have the tool we created as a society called "the government" regulate it instead of waiting for "the market" to price things accurately.

Because let's be real golf courses will pay higher prices and poor people will suffer the burden if we wait for your idea to magically happen

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#209

Post by rsoto2 »

adrr wrote: post #189
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…

What about golf courses which use up 476 Billion of water every year? Way more than data centers. People complain about Nestle using water in californa for bottled water but it doesn't compare to what single golf course uses in a year.

yes I think these datacenters AND golf courses are a waste. crazy

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#210

Post by kmeisthax »

lxgr wrote: post #122
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?

Basically any discussion of water allocation is stupid. We already have a way to allocate water (or, really, any scarce resource) - markets. Instead of arguing over whether or not a hamburger is worth a car wash's worth of water, bill the person using the water for that amount of water. Let the water user and the price discovery mechanism fight it out. If it is not worth it to them, then they can move to somewhere where water is cheaper.

We don't do this, at least not in the western half of the US. Instead, the biggest consumers of water have "water rights" - the right to use a certain amount of water every year, for free, simply for owning a particular piece of land. And these water rights were all staked out based on estimates of the Colorado River that were wildly optimistic, so there's a century-long waiting list of claims that will permanently supercede your own if you fail[0] to actually consume the water you are entitled to.

This is insane, and it leads to some pretty insane incentives. Because agriculture was here first, it has the strongest claims to water, and a pretty heavy incentive to waste as much water as they are legally allowed to. A lot of the discussions surrounding water usage assume that because agriculture is necessary for human survival, that the water it uses is also necessary. It's not - and the only way to get an industrial water user to actually care about their water usage is to actually bill them for it.

Once we have an actual market for water (not just water "rights"), then we can start talking about what usages are actually necessary - i.e. what uses should we explicitly subsidize through taxes rather than implicitly subsidize through a terribly designed system.

[0] In the interest of fairness, I ran this comment through Google's chatbot, which would like you to know that TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, it takes ten years of intentional disuse to lose a water claim, and that there is a market for water rights. My counterargument is that most farmers do not care about how much water they can not use, and that a market for water rights is not the same as a market for water, because farmers can still decide to just use the water for free. The pricing mechanism cannot work if there are a class of protected users who do not feel backpressure from the pricing mechanism.

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