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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

#251

Post by wahern »

jerlam wrote: post #211
somewhatgoated wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 It doesn't matter if the owners are foreigners and the law is outdated.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.

> and those are regularly treated as sacred

They indeed are treated as sacred, it's enshrined in the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. The big problem in the American West it that the model of property rights in water sources makes it very difficult as a technical matter to put a price on a specific claim and to adjudicate disputes, without triggering a cascade of pricing and rights dilemmas upstream and downstream (figuratively and literally). Western states could in theory exercise eminent domain to take back water rights, and I think they occasionally do, but it's just very fraught from countless legal angles even before getting into the politics of it, which compound the headaches a hundredfold (partly because of the interdependent nature of everybody's rights). Most of the time Western states try to hack around the issues with complicated regulatory and taxing schemes to try to claw back some semblance of control over water resources. But it's very inefficient and ineffective. Property rights are useful because you don't need to centralize all pricing and usage decisions, or when you do--e.g. regulation, taxation, eminent domain--the mechanisms for applying those decisions are simpler and more mechanical; but Western water rights are just a different kind of beast. What's needed is comprehensive reform that tries to shift the American West to a better water rights model, specifically a better model for how property rights inhere in water resources, to drastically improve transactional efficiency, both from a legal and market perspective. But there's no simple way, and in particular no cheap way from a budgetary perspective, to get there even if the motivation existed to get around the monumental collective action problem, which it doesn't.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#252

Post by JuniperMesos »

rsoto2 wrote: post #208
pj_mukh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The government is the entity that enforces the existing water rights system.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#253

Post by munk-a »

kstrauser wrote: post #243
legitster wrote: post #70

> Using the prompt, “How much water is likely to evaporate from data centers in California per year, assuming they are all using mostly evaporative cooling?” several free AI websites provided ranges of estimates, below. These AI also can provide ranges and sources for calculation assumptions. Data centers with closed loop cooling systems are absolutely built all of the time. Total evaporative cooling has the advantag…

> People have no reality of how cheaply priced industrial water is in this country. Driving between SF and LA, you see a gazillion signs from water leeches complaining that the government won't give them yet more nearly-free water. No, I don't want to go without fresh crops. But yes, I absolutely believe that, say, growing almonds in basically a desert should be a financially expensive operation, and if that makes th…

This is a really awkward situation because while we'd really want the market to sort of auto-balance the costs between different suppliers it's also really hard to look at PE ratios right now and believe that the market is anywhere near sane. OpenAI could trivially monopolize the water supply in CA[1] with its current warchest and that would, for everyone, be terrible in some fundamentally obvious ways - so we've clearly got a pretty gigantic misalignment in the market which means we're reliant on the government specifically picking winners but ideally doing so in a sensible manner.

How many well cooked dinners is a prompt worth? Not nearly as many as the market currently says. If it were anything less vital we could probably just ride it out until the bubble bursts but if acceleration continues then in time water usage might actually rise to the levels that the most fear mongering folks are saying it's at.

1. Accidentally even - without even reaching into the realm of malicious intent.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#254

Post by usefulcat »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #150
bronson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're taking water from already parched regions, often pumping it out of the ground. Even if the water did come back locally as rain (it doesn't), it still makes it impossible for people to live off the same aquifers and water sources sustainably.

People are losing their minds in Wisconsin saying proposed data centers will drain lake michigan. I'm not kidding.

Hope they don't find out how much is lost naturally to evaporation each year..

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#255

Post by ssl-3 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #247
somewhatgoated wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Regulation is not necessarily the same as protecting; as other commenters state the specific regulations around agricultural water use in the drier western united states often encourage wasteful agricultural uses of water.

The driest places tend to have the most tightly-regulated water.

And the wettest places tend to have the least-regulated water.

(Nobody talks about it because shortages make bigger headlines than surpluses do, but there's a ton of agricultural areas in the US that have too much water and where providing drainage for farm fields is much more commonplace than irrigating them is.

It doesn't really matter in this context, though, because folks hate datacenters in these water-rich areas just the same as they do everywhere else.)

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#256

Post by JuniperMesos »

gensym wrote: post #216
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.

What are the real issues with them in your estimation? Anti-data-center people bring up water use as a reason why the government should legally prevent data centers from being built, and pro-data-center people bring up water use to argue against the anti-data-center position. I agree that the anti-data-center people are overestimating water usage, as well as the degree to which the amount of water data centers do use is a problem; and that they're doing so because they have some other objection to data centers that doesn't sound as convincing. It would be better to talk about those issues.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#257

Post by morley »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #56

Did anyone find it weird that the author uses AI itself to perform the calculations? Seems like a very poor quality piece

For a more informed deep dive into data center water usage (albeit many months old): https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-dat...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#258

Post by alphawhisky »

LinXitoW wrote: post #121
trollbridge wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A third perspective here, but maybe small ownership of these things allows for best practices (i.e. small farmers are greener and care about passing arable land to the next generation, small server owners care more about total system ownership which necessitates alternative energy production and making use of hardware that would otherwise be trashed). I think you're both onto something, now kiss!

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#259

Post by Levitz »

hugeBirb wrote: post #238
Levitz wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a good place to put effort into stopping because it isn't yet entrenched Oh yeah, excellent place to put effort, it's not entrenched, it's just straight up against technological giants in a race that is considered relevant for national security. That should be easy yeah, outstanding target to set. >and you stop the other negative effects besides just the pollution and water use, and you can build a coalition…

You are a deeply unserious person :'D

You are insinuating that a fight against tech giants is the preferable option regarding pollution and I'm unserious??

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#260

Post by [deleted] »

gensym wrote: post #216
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.

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