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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

#321

Post by Straw »

thrance wrote: post #307
jlebar wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the issue is not systematically using a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds. We don't do this for gasoline (in most countries), even though it is also vital for life. And yet people can still drive, afford to eat food grown with fertilizers, use plastic, and so on. Turns out markets are pretty good when you leave them alone. But when they're not left alone…

Gasoline is heavily regulated and subsidized. Leaving the oil market alone resulted in Standard Oil, and we obviously don't want that again.

Standard oil not only reduced consumer prices for gasoline, but was already losing its monopoly to competitors during the antitrust trial.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#322

Post by anubistheta »

foobiekr wrote: post #274
traderj0e wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't come out a little hotter, it gets evaporated in cooling towers. Same result as any other water usage. Cooling towers can't use seawater either. Most datacenters are in places where fresh water is abundant anyway, but some are not. Anyway agricultural water usage is way worse in California.

Agriculture is used to grow _food_.

Some of it, but then some AI is used to cure cancer.

But it doesn't have to happen in California.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#323

Post by anubistheta »

mrinterweb wrote: post #9

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?

We should just charge a fair price for water. Something that covers capital, operating, and decommissioning costs. No need to pass specific regulations or add legal complexity. It would solve itself. Imagine any other service saying "Oh no, we have too much demand, we need to make it illegal." Just put out bonds, and build up capacity.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#324

Post by cybercatgurrl »

jlebar wrote: post #276
JoshTriplett wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue is not systematically using a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds. The 101-level "solution" is to just raise the price to account for demand. The problem with that is that it treats all usage the same, whether it's a residence's first gallon or an alfalfa field's last gallon. But the former is something we need to protect. It makes sense to price wa…

> Part of the issue is not systematically using a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds. We don't do this for gasoline (in most countries), even though it is also vital for life. And yet people can still drive, afford to eat food grown with fertilizers, use plastic, and so on. Turns out markets are pretty good when you leave them alone. But when they're not left alone…

excuse me? leave the markets alone? to do what? continue screwing people over with the cost of living? at some point the government needs to step in when greed outstrips the ability of the consumer to meet the demand. capitalism on it’s own will demand ever increasing profits and that is simply unsustainable for any civilisation

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#325

Post by narrator »

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…

As the AI/Robotics genie emerges and who gets to feed the AI robot genie resources and for what becomes the central civilizational question, you're going to see the whole economy back its way into central planning.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#326

Post by cybercatgurrl »

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…

exactly! LA is peak capitalism over the environment. the amount of ecosystems destroyed by Los Angeles’s insatiable thirst for water is impressive

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#327

Post by pveierland »

Annoying to see slop like this on the front page taking up people's attention. Resource utilization connected to new infrastructure that is planned to be scaled exponentially is clearly important to analyze. Instead of research and insight this post just facilitates ignorance on the topic.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#328

Post by aaron695 »

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…

[dead]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#329

Post by XorNot »

anubistheta wrote: post #317
JoshTriplett wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue is not systematically using a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds. The 101-level "solution" is to just raise the price to account for demand. The problem with that is that it treats all usage the same, whether it's a residence's first gallon or an alfalfa field's last gallon. But the former is something we need to protect. It makes sense to price wa…

I disagree. A large part of the cost of a utility is fixed per customer. Or any product really. That's how bulk purchasing makes sense. I can get 4x the product at a bulk store for 2x the price. Instead of being prejudicial about the use case, let's just charge what the utility actually costs. Include capital, operation, and decommissioning costs. That way, if you get a sudden spike in demand, you have the cash flow…

This would be an extremely regressive pricing structure that still has the same punchline: somehow residential users pay more to still not have any water.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#330

Post by rdevilla »

marshray wrote: post #306
rdevilla wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality in the way information is used, I believe, is the opposite from what we think of. We believe that if there is sufficient information, we can use it to form an accurate model of reality. You should read Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. He calls this "the naive view of information," which is ignorant of the existence of what he astutely identifies as "intersubjective" realities (see also Angela Cooper-White's e…

> This is the endgame of postmodernist and constructivist thinking that exalts narrative and story as the ground source of truth. In some ways what we are seeing is a return to religious and superstitious thinking where sufficient belief in a dogma or a pantheon is enough to reify those narratives into consensus reality. I suspect the mistake here is imagining a past era in which humanity formed "consensus reality" o…

> I suspect the mistake here is imagining a past era in which humanity formed "consensus reality" out of evidence and reason. It can certainly appear that way to us today due to some super-strong publication bias effects since the Enlightenment era.

At least from the Newtonian perspective, reality definitely unfolds either one way or the other, and it's not a matter of opinion.

> There has never been a prior time in which a greater percentage of humanity had the means and the inclination to build a well-founded knowledge base and use it to critically assess incoming information.

This is definitionally Harari's naive view of information, which "says that information leads to truth, and knowing the truth helps people to gain both power and wisdom." You miss the point of the root comment.

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