One seriously wonders if GenX didn't manage to hit a sweet spot for technological availability ahead of everything just going to seed.
>The developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water.
>The company said its water consumption was so high last year because of temporary construction-related activities, such as concrete work, dust control and site preparation.
I do find it interesting that the framing is "a data center" used a bunch of water if it really is "manufacturing concrete uses a bunch of water."
Different source and event, same misleading headline as the one mentioned in the parent article.
Draining oasis in a desert might have much higher impact than one of the thousands of lakes in canada but still, it's a renewable resource. Most of the places suitable for datacenters have plenty of it anyway as datacenters are more suited for colder climates which usually have plenty of water.
Months in some places. But in the arid locations, it can take thousands of years for water to go from surface to aquifer.
A lot of these data centers and chip fabs are built in arid places because labor is cheap, taxes are low, and land is cheap. The reason for those three things is that there's not enough freaking water in the first place.
Slurping it up to run digital addiction mills and predatory advertising falls somewhere on a spectrum ranging from just plain stupid to abhorrently immortal.
At least that's my logic
Of course water use above replenishment rates is bad, it doesn't magically rain down in the same spot and all the underground water tables get full again. They deplete, meaning existing consumers have to dig deeper or just go without water. Even ancient peoples knew that if you take too much water from a well, it will dry out.
I imagine you would see the point in measuring how much water data centres use when one opens near you, and you can't flush your toilet any more.
1. No accounting for other countries or externalities such as large corporation leveraging to get what it wants at the expense of community members.
2. > Put another way, almost all (80%) the reported water used by AI occurs during the generation of electricity
Well that sure seems like a problem to me cuz that’s water that now needs to be used for generation that wasn’t prior and it’s a significant amount. And that impacts my water and electricity prices now.
Edit for 3: > Consumptive use can harm total access to freshwater, but freshwater sources are also regularly being replenished.
Yeah I don’t think so when Mexico City is sinking because its aquifer was depleted.
All in all he’s got some interesting points but I think he’s hyper focused on numbers and ignoring broader things.
My initial reaction is b.s. Companies building these data centers, in many instances, get tax breaks to start building. On top if it they get different breaks on cost of electricity or materials. And on top of it, we all know that corporates pay less taxes than individuals already. And last but not least, data centers don't require a lot of staff, so there is no "trickle down".
Curious to understand this better.
Like what, though? I'm not opposed to AI regulation at all, but the very last thing I expect it to fix is the resource constraints around GPGPU compute.
I feel like this is a pretty sustainable way to implement AI in an application, meanwhile I see most companies just implement with OpenAI API + some custom prompts on top.
Granted I've had to do this for some of my clients and it's a pretty easy way to implement AI, though I always have the sinking feeling that we could achieve the same thing in a way more efficent manner and a bit more effort.
Mega-scale AI data centers have other externalities. They're often touted as a way for rural counties to become the hubs of the digital era, but they don't employ many people, don't generate a whole lot of tax revenue, and basically just leverage cheap electricity at the expense of local residents. So it's a sham in that respect. You're not gonna have X, Google, Amazon, or Meta reinvigorate your community. You're just gonna have ratepayers subsidize some inference via higher electricity bills.
I have no doubt that someone will chime in saying with an "actually..." that electricity is fungible and therefore, it doesn't matter where the datacenter is built. If it were so, they wouldn't be getting built in places like Wyoming or eastern Washington, and electricity prices in these markets would be the same as they are in the SF Bay Area. In practice, though, there's plenty of factors that make the US electricity markets a lot more local.
was 50$ bounty, now 300$ - that's an unusually brazen stance.
"AI uses more water than other things"
and more:
"AI's water usage is being approved without proper planning, because of the arguably fake sense of urgency around it."
Other industries that use significant water have significant regulations already . AI has been desperately trying to avoid ANY regulation (unless it forces folk to use AI.)
I don't personally think water usage is the biggest issue with how AI is being rolled out, but it's one that is easier to engage the public on then copyright, or societal context collapse. :)
It’s frequently brought up as a reason not to use AI. The public perception right now is that doing anything with AI causes a lot of water to be “used” and that this is a very bad thing.
The main one is aquifer depletion. The consumptive vs withdrawal argument mostly holds water, but consumptive is a sliding scale. Evaporative cooling for data centers is solidly at the far ‘truly consumptive’ end of that scale because the consumed water will not reenter the local watershed. That’s problematic because aquifers are very slow to refill. So this is genuinely a concern in water stressed areas.
The other is the weak growth model. I suspect we’re only going to see faster and faster growth of data centers in coming years, making the consumption there more exponential than linear. Meanwhile the majority of the other consumptive consumers are strongly tied to demographics and population growth is slowing everywhere. For example agricultural water use in the US has held steady or even declined in recent years.
In fairness, part of that agricultural decline in use is from advancement in technology and methodology and we’ll likely see the same with data centers, but those numbers are unpredictable.
On the whole I agree that the concern over data centers in terms of water (and electricity) usage is overblown to an extent, but I think we do need to pay closer attention to the points that actually matter when looking at the situation.
shepherdjerred•58m ago
This article feels a bit biased and I would love to see HN's take.
alterom•37m ago
The AI water usage is a real problem because AI datacenters are effectively unregulated.
Yes, a car factory would be expected to use water, which is why we have environmental regulations in place.
"Lagging behind in AI" is treated as a national emergency which warrants forgetting about regulations.
This isn't some sort of quirk or accident; it's very much created by people writing headlines lie "The AI water issue is fake".
The following are symptomatic and typical:
- 800 data center approved in spite of vehement protests of the locals [1]
- Data center blatantly violates water regulations. When it comes to light, administration refuses to do anything about it [2]
- Data center gets constructed in historically disadvantaged / redlined areas disproportionately and adversely affecting Black people. Air quality drops. Nothing is done about it [3]
The AI water issue is indeed a red herring, because it is a part of a larger issue of the AI industry having free reign over anything that's deemed necessary for its existence.
The impact on people's lives and health is real. To say that the issue is "fake" is disingenuous at best, disinformation at worst.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/800-acre-data-center-app...
[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/georgia-data-cent...
[3] https://islandpress.medium.com/data-centers-threaten-black-c...
cess11•33m ago
The author is financed by some 'effective altruism' cultists operating a supposedly philantropic fund.
For a less partisan article on the same topic, this one might be worthwhile to you:
https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine...
The problems with 'data centers for AI' don't stop at water consumption, which is absolutely a real risk in some cases due to the relevant corporations having a knack for finding areas with really small or stressed aquifers and building there.
It's also somewhat common to skirt or just straight up abuse legal protections against corporate tyranny, e.g. by running noisy or polluting turbines.
Then the idea itself to eradicate the Internet and put everyone behind a SaaS database intermediary should be quite unpalatable to any sane and freedom loving person. Especially since these databases obviously make quite a lot of people insane or otherwise mentally disabled, including prominent figures in the movement to push this through.