Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI uses less water than the public thinks

californiawaterblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 425 posts

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#381

Post by frm88 »

therobots927 wrote: post #19

What they don’t mention is that the water is being polluted by the datacenters. It’s not as simple as “water go into datacenter, water come out of datacenter” Data centers can inadvertently pollute water through chemical runoff from evaporative cooling systems, including biocides, corrosion inhibitors, and heavy metals that accumulate at scale when facilities discharge up to 5 million gallons daily. https://www.datac…

Upvoted. What makes me sad is that I had to read hundreds of comments on all kinds of arguments until you pointed to the contamination issue. Not that the AI statistics in the AI thread submitted helped critical investigation.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#382

Post by dhruv3006 »

Just what I think can solve a problem in my hometown after reading this - I live in Kolkata,India - I dont think we will ever have a data centre here - we still have a lot of water issues - but if building data centers somehow equates to economic prosperity and such stats are shown - probably the city of joy will again regain its glory.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#383

Post by beepbooptheory »

Levitz wrote: post #173
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).

Great news, you are free to stop using AI and to drink beer, and so are we all.

thanks

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#384

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

SecretDreams wrote: post #268
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

The premise of your link is founded on the energy associated to with a single prompt. The source in your link for that energy claim links to a blog post that then links back to an earlier blog post from the original author of the link you provided (it's basically a circular reference). Basically, there's a lot of words in your initial link, but they all hinge on the readers taken the stated energy assumption for a si…

>The source in your link for that energy claim links to a blog post that then links back to an earlier blog post from the original author of the link you provided (it's basically a circular reference).

Huh? The latter blog post does link to the former's blog, but not as a source for that claim. It cites an Altman blog, an estimate from EpochAI, an article in the MIT Technology Review (albeit one that estimates 3x higher), and a paper put out by Google. It's really surprisingly well cited and I don't know how you came away from it thinking it was a circular reference. The google study is in the subheading!

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#385

Post by ma3gl1n »

Petersipoi wrote: post #92
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…

> 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!

Another example is pistachio farming in California, where it can take ~1+ gallon of water per nut according to some estimates. Much of the industry is enabled by high U.S. trade barriers on a certain country.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#386

Post by silexia »

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…

[flagged]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#387

Post by alex43578 »

thephyber wrote: post #289
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 absolutely rationed when it becomes scarce after having been plentiful. When hurricanes come to South Florida, the well off migrate North to wait out the storm while the poor suffer the dangerous conditions. Part of this is due to the price spikes of gasoline in the local market as supplies dwindle due to fewer truck shipments and refineries shutting down for the storm. Water is similar. Both water rights…

200 miles will easily get you out of the path of a hurricane. 200 back home. 400 miles at 20mpg is 20 gallons of gas. Even if gas doubles from $4 to $8, that’s only an extra $80, likely less than the cost of that one night of motel, and certainly less than the economic costs of actually being hit by a hurricane.

As with many things, markets do work, but people don’t make rational choices for their well-being.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#388

Post by cindyllm »

alex43578 wrote: post #387
thephyber wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gasoline is absolutely rationed when it becomes scarce after having been plentiful. When hurricanes come to South Florida, the well off migrate North to wait out the storm while the poor suffer the dangerous conditions. Part of this is due to the price spikes of gasoline in the local market as supplies dwindle due to fewer truck shipments and refineries shutting down for the storm. Water is similar. Both water rights…

200 miles will easily get you out of the path of a hurricane. 200 back home. 400 miles at 20mpg is 20 gallons of gas. Even if gas doubles from $4 to $8, that’s only an extra $80, likely less than the cost of that one night of motel, and certainly less than the economic costs of actually being hit by a hurricane. As with many things, markets do work, but people don’t make rational choices for their well-being.

[dead]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#389

Post by neuronexmachina »

cybercatgurrl wrote: post #326
kstrauser wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

LA's water usage is dwarfed by the agricultural water usage in the Central Valley: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#390

Post by therobots927 »

frm88 wrote: post #381
therobots927 wrote: post #19

What they don’t mention is that the water is being polluted by the datacenters. It’s not as simple as “water go into datacenter, water come out of datacenter” Data centers can inadvertently pollute water through chemical runoff from evaporative cooling systems, including biocides, corrosion inhibitors, and heavy metals that accumulate at scale when facilities discharge up to 5 million gallons daily. https://www.datac…

Upvoted. What makes me sad is that I had to read hundreds of comments on all kinds of arguments until you pointed to the contamination issue. Not that the AI statistics in the AI thread submitted helped critical investigation.

Even people who are against data centers have a misconception around the data center water problem. It leaves us vulnerable to counter arguments like those found in this article and makes the movement look bad.

That being said, I’m not too worried about it. I think it’s okay if your average person has this misconception, because at the end of the day they are correct that datacenters threaten their water supply. They might not have the mechanism right. The resultant skepticism might force hyperscalers to commit to water preservation.

If republicans and centrist dems didn’t run the show right now I would say regulation should be passed forcing datacenters to treat all water prior to expelling it back into the water supply, with a state funded test facility located on premise to make sure they’re doing it right.

And not to mention - and this is for the AI cheerleaders that actually read this far - the air pollution. Musk’s datacenter in Memphis is running on GAS GENERATORS. So in many cases the DCs are actually polluting the air as well as the water. In a poor and predominantly black neighborhood of course. It’s just absolutely disgusting and the backlash against this will be swift and harsh. Honest to God us tech people are no different from those at Dow chemical that dump(ed) metric shit tons of highly carcinogenic PFAS into countless rivers. I work in this industry. But I don’t have the ability to fool myself the way most of HN seems to.

Post reply on HN