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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

#51

Post by loeg »

testfoobar wrote: post #34
alephnerd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's populism for ya, and it's sadly extremely effective. Meanwhile, both China and India are giving free electricity, providing dollar-for-dollar capex subsidizes, and 25 year tax exemptions to build data centers [0][1]. Love how HN wants to strangle the infrastructure that underlies our entire industry and why HNers get paid. It really highlights how much of the opposition to AI comes from the "chattering classes…

Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fea…

Slopulism is effective because people are idiots and happy to eat up lies that align with their priors. Nothing to do with material conditions.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#53

Post by bigmadshoe »

bee_rider wrote: post #38

I don’t really get the water concerns in datacenter cooling. Even if a lot of water was used for cooling with every prompt (which he argues against here, but, even if )… water “used up” by cooling just comes out a little hotter, right? Maybe evaporated. Then it’ll come back in the form of rain. This isn’t an industrial chemistry process that leaves some toxic waste in the water. Or an agricultural one that puts water…

By that argument water use is never a bad thing since all water comes back as rain. The problem is that data centers need to use clean water, which has to be treated. On a local scale, a large data center could starve a community of potable water, even if the state-wide water use is very small.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#54

Post by bronson »

bee_rider wrote: post #38

I don’t really get the water concerns in datacenter cooling. Even if a lot of water was used for cooling with every prompt (which he argues against here, but, even if )… water “used up” by cooling just comes out a little hotter, right? Maybe evaporated. Then it’ll come back in the form of rain. This isn’t an industrial chemistry process that leaves some toxic waste in the water. Or an agricultural one that puts water…

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.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#55

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#57

Post by [deleted] »

echoangle wrote: post #47
bee_rider wrote: post #38

I don’t really get the water concerns in datacenter cooling. Even if a lot of water was used for cooling with every prompt (which he argues against here, but, even if )… water “used up” by cooling just comes out a little hotter, right? Maybe evaporated. Then it’ll come back in the form of rain. This isn’t an industrial chemistry process that leaves some toxic waste in the water. Or an agricultural one that puts water…

The water isn’t gone but if it comes back as rain, it at least has to be cleaned again, since data centers probably don’t use raw rainwater for cooling. It’s probably still not too bad but there’s at least some work done that’s „used up“ by letting tap water (or probably demineralized water used for cooling) evaporate.

[deleted]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#58

Post by loeg »

Zigurd wrote: post #29

Look over here! Not over there at grid infrastructure and generating capacity, or noise and pollution from on-site generators. The scale of electricity use in data centers is much more likely to cause disruption and the shifting of costs onto residential customers to pay for a new infrastructure and generating capacity.

You can be against lying about water use and for being honest about additional electricity demand at the same time. You can't smear someone for rejecting falsehoods just because you have an unrelated complaint.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#59

Post by cute_boi »

bee_rider wrote: post #38

I don’t really get the water concerns in datacenter cooling. Even if a lot of water was used for cooling with every prompt (which he argues against here, but, even if )… water “used up” by cooling just comes out a little hotter, right? Maybe evaporated. Then it’ll come back in the form of rain. This isn’t an industrial chemistry process that leaves some toxic waste in the water. Or an agricultural one that puts water…

> Or an agricultural one that puts water in plants and then ships it off to some other region

Just like an agriculture, data center puts water to cool chips and ships token to some other reason?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#60

Post by hnav »

quickthrowman wrote: post #49
Brendinooo wrote: post #13

Usually when people compare data center water usage to golf course water usage I feel a lot better about the whole thing.

Compare it to alfalfa and you’ll be laughing your ass off at how much water alfalfa consumes. ~340 acres of alfalfa in California growing year round uses as much water as Google’s data center in The Dalles uses in one year. That data center used 550M gallons for evaporative cooling in 2025, which is 1687 acre-feet of water. One acre of alfalfa in California uses ~5 acre-feet of water per acre of alfalfa per year. The…

Feed cows in places without the water and sun to grow this stuff locally. Which is tantamount to exporting water from the American West which will eventually be turned into a desert. We effectively can't be trusted to govern our natural resources more than 5 years out.
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