"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
The future will talk in awe and condemnation about the scale of our beef consumption.
The amount of water it took to grow the feed they ate.
The amount of greenhouse gases it created.
The fact that the land use required was the size of north america.
The suffering that was required to inflict on the animals themselves.
They won't mention data centers at all.
Stupid Question: Why is the heat not used to generate power through heat exchanging devices and turbines? Or at least for heating the water of nearby town by long distance heating? Wouldnt that be a pretty obvious synergy?
Two of the big reasons:
The efficiency of power generation from heat increases with a larger temperature difference.
Turbines operate via high pressure steam, not just hot water.
So ya there's a lot of heat given off but it's not "high quality" heat because it isn't hot enough. And if you ran the data center hotter it would destroy the gpus.
grok is using delicious clean drinking water from the memphis sands aquifer for cooling. elon promised to build a water treatment plant in order to stop using drinking water but, and you’ll never believe this, he didn’t.
fuck elon.
please do not use grok.
he did the same in germany. When questioned about the water usage of his tesla factory he gaslighted every1 by saying look here's water everywhere. Turns out, you can only extract so much water from the ecosystem and the inhabitants now have their water rationed. He doesnt give a flying fuck about other people.
He doesn't even care about his own children. Disowned one and used the toddler as a human shield.
"This is my son Kevlar."
When are governments gonna step in and shut that shit down? I understand the corruption in the US will always put profits over people, but why are European countries letting american companies do this shit?
The likely irony that these data centres will be used in the pipeline of creating a commercial for bottled water.
There was a time in the not distant past when "revolt or reform" was even a debate, but it is clear now what needs to be done.
I know people LOOOOOOVE to use how many bajillion gallons (wtf is a gallon? is that a bucket? learn to use litres) AI data centers use, without looking into how much that is as a percentage of total water use:
Basis: 322 billion US gallons per day, equivalent to 117.53 trillion gallons per year. Percentages are calculated against total US water withdrawals in 2015. (USGS)
| Category | Annual volume, trillion US gallons | Share of total US water withdrawals | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total US water withdrawals | 117.530 | 100.000% | USGS, 2015 (USGS) |
| Thermoelectric power | 48.545 | 41.304% | USGS: 133 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Irrigation | 43.070 | 36.646% | USGS: 118 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Public supply | 14.235 | 12.112% | USGS: 39.0 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Industrial, self-supplied | 5.402 | 4.596% | USGS: 14.8 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Aquaculture | 2.756 | 2.345% | USGS: 7.55 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Mining | 1.460 | 1.242% | USGS: 4.00 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Domestic, self-supplied | 1.190 | 1.012% | USGS: 3.26 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| Livestock | 0.730 | 0.621% | USGS: 2.00 billion gal/day (USGS) |
| All data centers: direct water consumption, 2023 | 0.0174 | 0.0148% | LBNL: 66 billion liters (LBNL) |
| All data centers: direct plus electricity-related consumption, 2023 | 0.2288 | 0.1947% | LBNL: 66 billion liters direct plus nearly 800 billion liters indirect (LBNL) |
| AI servers: annual scenario estimate, 2024–2030 | 0.193–0.297 | 0.164–0.253% | Nature Sustainability: 731–1,125 million m³ per year (Nature Sustainability) |
The first eight categories add up to 99.879%. The small difference from 100% is caused by rounding in the USGS daily figures.
The data-center and AI rows represent water-consumption footprints, while the USGS sector rows represent water withdrawals. They are included for scale comparison and should not be added to the sector totals.
I wanna know how much of that irrigation goes to corn and lawns/greens.
Idk but I do know my town is in level 3 drought but the car washes and golf courses are exempt.
Thanks for sharing stats. If we could convert 5-10% more of total grid to renewable energy it would more than make up for additional data center water consumption growth nationally.
We’re obviously in the Fuck AI community but at least there’s one path to limiting the external damages.
You are all being manipulated (fear mongered). This is rediculous.
And I'm still for forcing them to circulate their water loops, by law.
We need to make evaporation cooling illegal. They can make a closed loop system like Nvidia uses but they won't, because it's more expensive. We need the law to force them to.
What do you mean by "evaporation cooling"? A fraction of the water evaporates to provide cooling, a fraction is discharged as purge to prevent solute accumulation, and the rest is recycled? I thought the main reason that datacenters consume as much water as they do is when they don't recycle the water, and just use it once and then discharge it (no evaporation at all).
Maybe I'm misinformed but I am close to someone that designs them. He said evaporation cooling is cheaper, closed loop systems are more expensive.
There's nothing hard to explain for historians of the future: it was the second gilded age that saw the buildup of the techno-fascist infrastructure by greedy billionaires - sorry, trillionaires - in cahoots with the government. Now get back in line to get counted citizen...
One report estimated that U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021).
That estimate was from 2021.
Now it's at least around 600 million gallons of water per day.
Corporate capture of our government has destroyed our country, and will soon destroy our entire way of life. If we stop all harmful emissions today, the planet will still warm for another 20-30 years before it starts going back down. 30 more years of hotter summers, shortened winters, extended hurricane seasons, extended and worse droughts/wildfires...
The people that approved these data centers should be charged with crimes against humanity.
Reminds me of how Britain starved India cause it forced them to grow tea instead of food for themselves.
Sounds about white.
I think it's pretty easy. We let the rich rule our world, and the rich demanded this, and so a lot of people just let it happen through bribes.
It's even easier to explain when it becomes public how much of this infrastructure use is consumerism vs most-probably government analysis.
The drought statistic is true but the water consumption one is batshit insane lmao. It all comes form a press firm called Mordor Intelligence which hasn't meaningfully backed up that claim.
AI datacenters are likely to not even breach 100 billion gallons BY 2028. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water)
Obviously that's still a lot of water, but 264 billion gallons right now is an absurd claim.
The worst part is all that drinking water is being wasted semi-permanently. Most of it then goes to the sea and becomes saltwater. Even if the US heavily invested into desalination plants right now - it'd take decades to potentially retrieve most of that.
All that for... another economic crisis?
Related Digital’s development of a $16 billion data center in Saline Township, Michigan is moving forward after they sued the local government in response to the locals voting AGAINST the construction. They’re just going to ignore the people’s vote
Same thing is happening in TN right now where a company is trying to build a small data center next to a zoo. The city held public hearings about it, but basically told people it was already a done deal. The company threatened to sue to city if it didn’t pass.
These things are a blight on our society. It’s a race to the bottom with profits coming before everything else.
False! Tge fruit videos are the side project! The real project is undressing minors and generating them doing CP! If you don't believe me, just ask grok!
Meanwhile we have commercials on the radio "debunking" the myth that data centers waste a ton of water. We're brainwashing the people, which is becoming easier as our braincells waste away using LLMs.
Future? Historians?
You are funny.
No mystery. The entire point of capitalism is to please the disgustingly privileged at the expense of everybody else. Literally everything is like this. "AI" is just the latest version. See also cars.
New rule: no water cooling in DCs. Air cooling and air con.
That and some hard rules on power usage would go a long way. If the US ever updates its infrastructure, and especially for power, that should open up new, safe options that don't kill or poison people.
For the mean time, though, let's stop the insanity.
That's quite literally impossible. The power consumption has gotten so bad that they need to water cool the AC condensers as far as I know.
Oh and the fun fact is that they could just use closed loop water cooling instead of evaporating all that water away... But many don't because that uses more power and power is more expensive than water.
Not to mention the fact that AI companies aren't even profitable
How about you link a real source instead of some rando.
If this article is correct i guess we can have AI fruit videos if we skip meat and dairy a day or two a month. https://veganhorizon.substack.com/p/ai-vs-animal-agriculture-the-numbers
Have you looked at the record heatwaves hitting the world? We should be reducing meat and dairy and dismantling "AI" data centers. Trading one for the other is nowhere near enough.
Why not neither?
Define "consume".. where does the water go, again?
Evaporative cooling
Cooking fish stock?
They'd need to be dead inside to not grok it
Always pisses me off that companies flagrantly use literary references like “grok” for the most absolutely evil shit
He thinks he’s cool for knowing the term, that’s why he used it. The man also thought “X” was a cool name…