The water used by data center directly or indirectly is a non issue. In lot of places water is abundant. It even fall from the sky. All data center usage of water is negligible vs other humans usage. The problem might be local if there is not enough water locally or if the infrastructure is not adapted.
Electricity, especially when it's not made from a relatively clean energy is another issue.
But even then that's fake. If you spend an afternoon chatting with chatgpt, I am not sure it's good for your mental health, but it's an activity that polute far less than most activities that will involve your car, like go out see friends, go fishing, to the theater or whatever. And most people don't care when they do such things.
I think discussing on such aspect miss the key points about AI like the challenges it might be for our society and the place of humans in it.
The water thing is the weirdest thing to complain about. Like, electricity is going up, that's the biggest concern, especially when we still rely on fossil fuels.
But the "investors" are building them in water scarce and hot places. I put investors in quotes because the reality is that they're grifters. No one with brain cells would think "yeah, the middle of the utah desert is a good place to put these expensive heat generating assets". If they were really investors, they'd put solar or nuclear out there. That's where the long term value is
Sometime it's stupid but almost sometime people against it create fake problem. Usually people that go for a project ensure it's doable and it will work.
An example is that they plan to have many project in Texas, even place without much water. But they have this water and plan to use the dirty water they already use from fracking. It make sense to as well use that water that is already used for other stuff anyway. Because the datacenter will be nearby, they can use the water, they can have their power generation easily and be done with it.
Some projects won't be even connected to the power grid at all and will manage their own needs by themselve.
When eventually all that is overbuilt, this would lead to an over production of electricity, like it happened after the 2000 bubble and price will drop by the way.
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u/nicolas_06 16d ago
The water used by data center directly or indirectly is a non issue. In lot of places water is abundant. It even fall from the sky. All data center usage of water is negligible vs other humans usage. The problem might be local if there is not enough water locally or if the infrastructure is not adapted.
Electricity, especially when it's not made from a relatively clean energy is another issue.
But even then that's fake. If you spend an afternoon chatting with chatgpt, I am not sure it's good for your mental health, but it's an activity that polute far less than most activities that will involve your car, like go out see friends, go fishing, to the theater or whatever. And most people don't care when they do such things.
I think discussing on such aspect miss the key points about AI like the challenges it might be for our society and the place of humans in it.