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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

#81

Post by aschla »

My conspiracy theory is the whole AI datacenter water consumption outrage is a psyop by state actors to worsen public sentiment around AI, so China and others can catch up. Obviously we should lessen the environmental impact of our technology, while considering it's relative impact vs benefit, especially compared to other technology, in this case in particular to other datacenter usage.

But it's comical to see the average person commenting online, outraged at new datacenters and their water usage (separating this from legitimate zoning issues), when all their posts are in fact being transmitted, stored, and served by relatively similar datacenters.

Is the average person allergic to asking follow-up questions?

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#82

Post by catlikesshrimp »

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…

[flagged]

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#83

Post by Geee »

One good way to save water is to use treated wastewater for cooling. xAI is building this kind of system in Memphis.[0] It'll connect to a nearby wastewater treatment plant and they'll need to build an additional treatment plant before the water can be used for cooling. It's a closed-loop system inside the data center, where they use clean water, and it connects to open-loop evaporative cooling towers with heat exchangers.

[0] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/elon-musk-xai-mem...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#84

Post by adammarples »

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…

Loads of agricultural water usage in the western states is on totally optional stuff like beef and almonds

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#85

Post by andersonpico »

alephnerd wrote: post #8
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

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…

you're arguing against things that have no material effect. "oh won't you think about adversarial discourse about the most well funded industry in recent history"

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#87

Post by ldoughty »

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.

The problem is that data centers use SO MUCH water... sure we humans let water evaporate, but this is a new source of water "waste" to the tune of nearing 2 billion gallons/year, just in Loudon County Virginia & connected water users [0].

When that water source is underground wells, this can take years (on the fast end) or decades (on the moderate end) to get back down. Look at California's water issue -- so many wells extracting water for farming has changed the land topography.

Also, when water 'comes back', it might come back in the ocean and not on land... reducing the available fresh water without desalination.

Data centers need the water to cool... but maybe there's room to find incentives for them to do so while making sure our water bills don't go up like our electric bills are because of the extra load they are putting on utilities.

[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/19/virginia_datacenter_w...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#88

Post by softfalcon »

The data coming from the University of Calgary about the data centres they're building in Alberta, Canada seems to indicate that they're using evaporative cooling, which is very expensive water wise.

The bigger concern though, is the power requirements. Which are set to double or triple the energy use of the entire Province (analogous to a State in the US).

https://ucalgary.ca/sustainability/mobilizing-alberta/climat...

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#89

Post by senko »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #61
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…

I honestly don't know if you are an AI atroturfing bot. No, I am not being sarcastic. Given this is the top comment and there is no reply, here you go For a pre-chewed eli5 overview, check this: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... A responsible human must always verify information. I DW as "secondary l" information source. For instance https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-ai-need-so-much-energy/…

> tldr: chip immersion uses less water but is more expensive. Water evaporation is the opposite. Datacenters will use the cheapest they can get away wi

This suggests a simple fix: charge more to the datacenters (not people) for the water, to make the other option competitive.

No need to throw baby with the ... erm, bathwater.

Re: AI uses less water than the public thinks

#90

Post by wahnfrieden »

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…

Agricultural water usage distribution prioritizes luxury consumption and drought areas are subsidized
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