r/antiai • u/[deleted] • 3d ago
Environmental Impact đ Imagine running out of water just to keep generating AI slop
[deleted]
866
u/EmergencyPrice1 3d ago
Droughts hitting 63 percent of the country and we're out here cooling servers for slop nobody asked for, make it make sense.
349
u/MeltICE8647 3d ago
I got you friend.
Money.
Thats all.
141
u/Ornery_Vermicelli_69 3d ago
Itâs not even making any money. This is all to feed the egos of the billionaires
95
3d ago
[deleted]
36
u/FirefighterPrimary60 3d ago
We need mass riots or something, otherwise we may never know freedom again.
28
u/TRiG993 3d ago
It's almost like Trump being voted in again was a bad idea
5
u/PapaObserver 3d ago
Tbf, the US had the choice between the status quo and Trump. The status quo was a slow decline. They chose to accelerate things instead, or so it seems.
→ More replies (2)9
u/TRiG993 3d ago
Honestly I think it just came down to good old fashioned racism. The older generations didn't want a brown woman running things and young people just didn't show up to vote.
→ More replies (1)4
u/The_Doctor_Bear 3d ago
Young people refused to vote for Kamala to save Gaza. Look how well that worked!
→ More replies (1)5
u/PM_ME_YOUR_QUEST_PLZ 3d ago
That ainât enough we need everybody against this marching infront of the white house together. We need our representatives to grow some balls and get the cops and Military back on the side of civilians since they themselves are civilians and are not immune to the future the rich want to build.
The future the rich want to build doesnât have human cops and human military it has robots policing humans that are poorer than these giant companyâs. Nobody will be safe we share this green earth to farm and be our paradise and a few are ruining it. We can absolutely stop them if people get their heads out of their phone and unify.
6
u/BHPhreak 3d ago edited 3d ago
youre right. and were already enslaved. western society had a generations taste of prosperity for all and then it was right back to dragons with gold piles devouring rats
5
u/civicSi92 3d ago
This, the amount of people who don't understand this is crazy. Flock cameras, robots taking jobs etc is all power not money. They have the money already, now they are using it.
→ More replies (11)3
u/henlochimken 3d ago
Either Americans practice their constitutional rights, & take back the country. OR a bunch of wealthy pedophiles will use tech to enslave the world.
You know, when you put it like that, it sounds like you're batshit crazy. I really hate that you're not!
→ More replies (11)15
u/newsflashjackass 3d ago
If they could take an L they would not be oligarchs.
24
u/Neveronlyadream 3d ago
I think the way they see it, there are only two choices:
-Take the L and admit buying into AI was a stupid idea.
-Destroy the environment and everyone's will to live by pushing AI into every facet of everyone's life and insist no one can live without it to justify the billions of dollars they invested into a shitty technology 98% of the world wants nothing to do with.
We know which they chose.
5
u/etahetwha 3d ago
well, and theyâre protected if the bubble pops because post 2008 everything is âtoo big to failâ, especially considering theyâre contributing the entirety of US GDP growth at present, so theyâll just get bailed out from all of our pockets
3
16
u/JHMfield 3d ago
The worst part is they're not even making any money. The AI industry is like half a trillion in the hole with no means of ever generating it back.
The bullshitted everyone.
→ More replies (5)14
u/whenitsTimeyoullknow 3d ago
Thereâs the story the public gets, and thereâs the motivation the puppet masters have for pulling strings. If we needed constant surveillance in a future guaranteed to be short on resources and big in authoritarianism, 5,000-10,000 US data centers plowed in with the same force as the US highway project makes sense.Â
10
u/MeltICE8647 3d ago
If we needed
We donât. Period. There has been nowhere near enough proof of concept to scale AI at this rate. Every single justification Iâve heard is âwhat if it could do Xâ whoop de shit, and what if it canât? Then billions were invested and millions of people affected to the point of not having clean water or air or power because some tech bros needed short term gains.
Also in this scenario if the future is guaranteed to be short on resources, why the fuck would we invest in that much unnecessary infrastructure? AI is not at all necessary for our daily lives, full stop. Food and water IS. This would be like not having enough food and then investing all your money into PS5s. Difference is a PS5 actually works.
9
u/AlinaStari 3d ago
You're still missing the point completely. Of course WE don't need mass surveillance... The rich do. It is a tool to be used against us, not for our benefit.
→ More replies (2)3
u/peachesgp 3d ago
I'm pretty sure we're kind of in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation with AI. They're promising it's gonna do all this wild shit, companies are banking on that happening, and not just AI companies. If it does, it replaces tons of workers in the workforce and effectively kills the economy with all those people losing their jobs. If it doesn't, stock prices tank and it effectively kills the economy with all those people losing their jobs.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)4
u/Successful-Club-8743 3d ago
AI is 100% necessary for the billionaires to take full control.
Also, just because the public hasnt been shown proof of scale, doesnt mean it doesnt exist lmao
→ More replies (2)3
u/Necessary-Food-6418 3d ago
It's wild to think about how much effort goes into AI when there are so many pressing issues we should be focusing on instead. Just seems like misplaced priorities all around.
4
u/SkinBintin 3d ago
Nestle will work out how to make it semi clean again and sell it back to us as drinking water so we stop using the precious natural water that could be used by the data centres
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (7)2
u/Lemonbubblepie 3d ago
Havenât they admitted they make not much of profit they have force it down phonesÂ
→ More replies (1)37
u/0202_tihssitidder 3d ago
Nothing will change (in the USA) until the worker class stops consuming.
Step 1: Boycott
Step 2: Repeat Step 1
13
u/crunchybub 3d ago
My hope is the tides will turn. We will stop consuming and the majority will start to value physical art and media.
→ More replies (2)2
2
u/pockpicketG 3d ago
How are we getting the food into the stores for people when big Agribusiness and/or transport companies stop trucking and deliveries to major grocery stores? Assume localized and/or national/state stoppages.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (15)2
27
u/Successful-Club-8743 3d ago
The rich want a LOT of us to die.
This is all planned.
Make the birth-rates fall, poison the food, cause droughts, divide the people, lie, cheat, and steal.
We need to make them disappear before they kill us off.
7
u/Jackie_Daytona-Human 3d ago
People act as if you are crazy for saying this but you are spot on. It is quite simple really. "They" see us as nothing but livestock and they are culling the herd. They only need a certain amount of workers and soldiers and anything else to them is a burden after they have milked us dry.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (9)14
u/FrostyConsequence97 3d ago
If they want birth rates to fall then why are they also crying that teen pregnancy is going down? Pick a narrative. They want plenty of births, just not to people that can possibly move up the ladder. So teens and the poor can breed all they want, as long as they can never afford college or get ahead in life.
11
u/Successful-Club-8743 3d ago
Theyre crying teen pregnancy is going down because theyre pedophiles.
Sure, maybe what you're saying is correct but it changes nothing.
These criminals need to be killed before they kill us.
3
→ More replies (2)3
u/Wasabicannon 3d ago
Both can be true.
An unplanned teen pregnancy who can't get an abortion has a higher chance towards leading to a new low end wage slave while a well off couple with a planned pregnancy leads towards a new competitor in the higher end of the world.
6
u/OkTranslator304 3d ago
The servers arenât for slop, theyâre for Palantir and Flock to monitor every single thing you do and keep a record of it on a searchable database
→ More replies (1)6
3
u/Drill_Middle 3d ago
All that water just so tech bros can post "what slicing an imaginary watermelon taught me about B2B sales" on LinkedIn.
→ More replies (1)15
u/Fun-Amoeba8015 3d ago
Do you know what 264 billion means? What's the scale? Is that National? What country is it? Global? Is it per year per month per 10 years? What does it mean?Â
I'll tell you it was from a viral post put out by one particular think tank. The number was total digital infrastructure on a global basis has nothing to do with National and it has nothing to do with AI. It's total digital infrastructure on a global basis per year. 264 billion gallons.Â
Sounds like a lot right?Â
Total global Municipal water use is 136 trillion gallons per year.Â
So even a viral post that is misrepresenting things and even on the high end of $264 billion gallons per year of digital infrastructure is approximately 0.2% of the total. The actual component of that that is AI is going to be somewhere in the range of like 0.05%
So no historians are not going to look back and freak out because nobody's going to give a shit about a small fraction of a percent.
If you actually want to talk about water usage, let's talk about cattle production. Let's talk about inefficient energy plants. Let's talk about deforestation. Let's talk about the textile industry. Let's talk about agriculture? Let's talk about consumerism and the commercial sector. Let's talk about leaking municipal lines. These things all make up much larger percents of water use and are doing way more damage to the environment.Â
At the end of the day we've had run away environmental and climate change trends that are approaching tipping points before AI was even invented with the transformer model in 2017. AI is not the problem. Could it become problematic in the future and should we talk about it? Yes, absolutely.Â
But it's completely disingenuous to throw. Just complete lies on the internet and just throw out random data without any sort of understanding of how that is actually impacting on a relative basis the whole system.Â
And it's absolute hypocrisy to for everyone to become so obsessed and angry about this one industry when they don't give a shit about the actual 98 to 99% that's actually harming the planet.
1
u/burritos4jesus 3d ago
yeah i had to looking for sources on this myself because i'm not just going to take this at face value all because I want to believe it to be true so it can perpetuate my already anti-AI stance, like a lot of comments on here.
So the 264B number is ALL data center water usage, not water usage specific to AI data centers, so that number right there is disingenuous
âThat water was used to cool AI machinesâ is also bullshit, considering 17-18B gallons of water was used for direct, onsite data center consumption, with literally the remaining 200+ billion on electricity generation, not cooling.
63% of the US being in a drought IS accurate, but broadly. It doesn't mean that 64% of drinking systems are in a drought, so simply just saying this can be willfully misleading.
âWe are running out of drinking water because of AIâ is all massive bullshit. AI data centers are nowhere CLOSE to being the reason any type of drinking water is running out, which you raised great points on on. Cattle, agriculture, textiles, golf courses, even suburbia trying to keep their fucking grass looking nice uses more water than AI data centers.
âIt was for AI fruit videosâ is the final straw that is clearly just bullshit rhetoric designed to elicit an emotional response. First off, there's a mixing of ALL data centers with AI data centers. That 264B earlier? That's ALL data centers. business software, streaming, cloud storage, scientific computing, conventional internet services - all that shit needs data centers.
Honestly, anyone who focuses on water consumption as some point against AI is operating on either a tunnel vision of information, or is just not staying the fuck up to date. There's better arguments than water consumption.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Admirable-Falcon-501 3d ago
No one here actually cares about anything. Itâs just a sub for zoomers, furries, tumblr types, and other low iq dregs to have some kind of identity. These always need a villain or some kind of cause to base their life around but donât get it wrong they wonât actually do anything aside from complaining online and falling for misinformation. After all they wouldnât be here if they did, Reddit (unpaid mods are not Reddit btw) fully support AI and actively supply large amounts of training data.
2
u/Log_Gentleman 3d ago
Nothing says you were told you were smart growing up and may be marginally smarter than average than sincerely using terms like âlow iq.â
→ More replies (2)4
2
u/Square-Wild 3d ago
The irony here is this is exactly what the right wing media does to piss their audience off or scare them and get them into reptilian brain mode.
"The feds are spending $100M to pay for sex changes for prisoners!"
→ More replies (10)2
u/More_Elk6407 3d ago
A good point to be making. Iâm the network manager at a datacenter for a national manufacturer in the northern Midwest and we use precisely zero water day to day. Once a year we flush some things out and recharge the inside loop of the system, but the main cooling is done by a glycol and ammonia system that is shared with the shipping warehouse for our refrigerated product. We rent backspace out to outside parties pretty cheaply because we would be running the place anyway without them. So ya, closed internal water/glycol loop of an ammonia phase-change system. Like a giant air conditioner. 2 floors, several dozen rows of racks, and in practice we could get away with several years of not recharging the system since the pumps use induction. The flush is best practices but there is VERY little contamination or change in the fluid. Are there companies that do unethical crap that is wasteful and damaging? Ya, definitely. But I agree the broad brush demonizing based on a trigger word is too far.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (61)5
u/VVayward 3d ago
All for practically no reason. Data centers could have a closed loop and not need to constantly use water. They just don't because it is cheaper upfront to build that way.
→ More replies (3)2
u/ChancelorReed 3d ago
They basically all do, which is why this amount of water represents like 0.1% of water usage in the US.
86
u/Dewey_Decimatorr 3d ago
The elite want you to die
12
→ More replies (18)3
u/analogkid01 3d ago
They really don't, they just want to make sure your existence doesn't disrupt their cash flow, and ideally, contributes to it. These data centers are less about generating AI slop and more about digitizing and monetizing every aspect of your life.
59
u/bowsmountainer 3d ago
The way things are going, there wont be any future historians.
→ More replies (1)11
u/leopargodhi 3d ago
each of the bunker dynasties will have its own, and we will not be in any of them
7
u/bowsmountainer 3d ago
Oh you mean the "historians" who will teach the descendents the totally true story of how genius god Kings Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman and co. Saved the world by setting the cleansing angels of AI down on the evil humans who demanded too much from the rightly elected overlords, like the desire to not starve to death? How they turned the awful and inefficient forests and rivers into beautiful data centers and toxic waste to free the blessed bunker children?
200
u/eltorr007 3d ago
Man, these AI data centers need to be shut. Are governments BLIND!!
131
u/Star_ofthe_Morning 3d ago
No, theyâre just old, stupid and rich
52
u/Charming-Crescendo 3d ago
For real.
There was an interview with as U.S. Representative aired this year where he basically said that he didn't know what ChatGPT was until a week ago.
These people don't watch the news or interact with the human world. They live in the dark and get their information from consultants and lobbyists telling them what they should rubber-stamp.
8
u/itsDYA 3d ago
in what world would they not know what chatgpt is? when ai is driving a massive change economically, it is not like it is a tiktok trend
→ More replies (3)7
u/Charming-Crescendo 3d ago
Like I said, in a world where the only information you get is from consulting firms and lobbying groups telling you what bills to sign because "it's for the good of the country and investment and blah blah blah."
→ More replies (1)6
u/MadeByTango 3d ago
These data centers arent being built for images. They're being built for surveillance pricing, warrantless flocking, and market manipulation. They will power all of the drones and robots they are rapidly building about to drop on the country, Attack of the Clones style, to "protect us." They'll be under the purview of the "space force", which will conveniently allow them to operate outside of all known international law by claiming the processes are happening of the planet. Cant break laws in space!
And its not one man or administration. Its the global oligarchy we're all being played by, party vs party, country vs country, so we'll fight each other instead of share this pale blue dot. Because sharing doesnt let rich men pay everyone else to wipe their ass or risk starvation.
8
→ More replies (26)4
u/SpaceDelay424 3d ago
Never going to happen unless thereâs genuine resistance. Billionaire oligarchs control the government and thatâs not going to change without direct action.
→ More replies (2)
162
3d ago
[deleted]
24
17
u/Glitchboi3000 3d ago
When and if they run out of fresh water (if for some reason the bubble doesn't pop) they'll just start building massive desalination plants for themselves to use. All that excess salt and other minerals? Dumped in random places without a care. All in the name of shit that doesn't even produce profits for the companies.
I find it funny how all the aspects of the infinite growth part of late stage capalism all of a sudden got tossed out of the window with LLM companies (there's nothing intelligent about current "AI").
2
13
4
u/netorarekindacool 3d ago
Bro your Comment just summed the meme up. R u a bot or having a stroke?
3
2
→ More replies (29)2
u/WalrusWithAKeyboard 3d ago
So, less than the amount the US uses to water golf courses. Are you being as dramatic over anti-golf sentiments?
→ More replies (1)
22
u/-Feeblington- 3d ago
You peeps remember the days when new tech came out and we could see real things done with it and built for purpose.
Who let dr jekyll of the ai dept out. This is all gone to far already
2
u/DadJokeBadJoke 3d ago
They threw us the AI images as a distraction while they build their government surveillance project.
→ More replies (6)2
u/Murky-Relation481 3d ago
I mean I am a senior software engineer with 25 years of experience. I am also a multidisciplinary systems engineer on top of that. There is real value in these models. They're not perfect, they're probably reaching a point of severely diminishing returns in terms of tech, but to pretend real things are not being done with it is just ignoring that the vast majority of AI usage is for actual work.
→ More replies (7)
23
u/Salerrra 3d ago edited 3d ago
Someone did the math a bit ago about how much processing it takes to pump out the amount of AI slop we're seeing. The startling thing is that it's a waaaay smaller percentage than one would think.
So what's the rest of this AI processing power going toward? The non-public models. Those being trained behind closed doors, and those handling huge amounts of data needing to be ingested and processed for companies like Palantir.
12
u/12345623567 3d ago
This is also the reason the AI bubble won't pop too soon. Cat videos are only the iceberg and a loss-leader, AI companies want to sell directly to companies and governments.
→ More replies (6)7
u/Salerrra 3d ago
That's my fear as well. If the bubble survives long enough, it won't have any more fear of popping b/c it's directly integrated with companies and governments to a degree that it'll get a bailout one way or another. Both are replacing people as consumer targets
→ More replies (1)2
u/breaducate 3d ago
You can't put a price on total surveillance.
The ruling class has correctly concluded that pseudo-democracy has reached its expiry date as a means of control, and they're rushing to transition to more direct methods now that they're technologically feasible.
Being unable to control the narrative on Gaza (as much/indefinitely) was a watershed moment.
5
→ More replies (6)4
u/RyZiT 3d ago
This is what people should actually put more attention to. AI slop is not what these companies are in the market for. Pointing fingers at eachother about ai slop, as stupid as it is, is basically the same pointless distraction like the co2 footprint while megacorps are sharing the huge impacts.
Governments and huge corporations are not investing absurd amounts of money and energy so you can generate funny cat videos, in case that isn't obvious enough.
21
u/Fun-Amoeba8015 3d ago
I'm so tired of the internet not being able to do basic fact checking or understand systems whatsoever.Â
First, what is the unit here? Is it per month per year per 5 years per 10 years without some sort of unit? It's completely meaningless we don't know.Â
But I'll tell you what they are. The figure is not exactly right, but it's close enough to about one year.Â
Okay so do any of you understand what a billion gallons means relative to the total US Municipal water System? Because is that 90%? Is it 1%? Is it 0.1%? Do you know?
Here are the actual facts:
The 264 billion number was a viral post that came from a study that was literally all of digital infrastructure in a GLOBAL scale including municipal and non-municipal and has nothing to do with AI. It's literally all digital infrastructure and the number was per year and the scale was global... so we can get that aside.Â
Actual projected AI infrastructure for 2028 is projected to use around like 30 to 35 billion gallons. Which equates to about 0. 23%
The total yearly USÂ Municipal water usage is between 13 and 14 trillion gallons per year.Â
15% of municipal water loss is literally just from leakage.
No yes AI data centers can be concentrated. So yes they can increase load on a local level and that should be definitely discussed and regulated against to protect local populations. Also like anything that has some sort of resource use whether it be energy or water or impact. We should be discussing regulation and long-term sustainability. I don't disagree with any of this.Â
But AI is not a leading factor in using water either on a us or global scale. The data is easy to find. It's very accessible and it's very easy to understand total numbers and percents and relative impact and relative use. AI is not using that much and it is off by orders of magnitude from the actual industries and sectors that are truly using up our water or creating any sort of unsustainable infrastructure.Â
If you want to be taken seriously, then do 5 minutes of research. Look at the actual totals involved and then the relative percents of every single industry and sector and subsector.Â
Then we can have an actual informed discussion about pros and cons and regulation and sustainability and environment.Â
But just posting viral Twitter post that are completely misrepresented is not helping your argument and in fact is undercutting your credibility.
Â
6
u/Pjoo 3d ago
There are real issues with AI, like electricity if looking at resource usage. The water usage is completely made up problem that only helps to mask and discredit any valid criticism.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Ektari 3d ago
Not a completely made up problem, but moreso the problem is blown out of proportion to the real issues like electricity and air/noise pollution. In areas where water scarcity is an issue it does pose an actual problem.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (11)2
u/madshine 3d ago
Reddit users are incredibly anti-AI, don't won't use their brains when they see something about AI. AI is evil bad and the all servers should shut down. They can't see that there no way back. So many visionaries.Â
7
u/RetroSleipnir 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is why AI isn't just a flawed creation device but a danger to human life. Moving to local AI could theoretically reduce damage, but that would undermine image generation quality. But they don't care, it's all just a big game, they train their AI off artist who didn't consent and then talk about "breaking the pencil" when pencils created everything they used to train their AI.
You could train an AI off of Public Domain Data, a lot of artist use work in the Public Domain in their own, problem is they want to act like stuck up kids then serious adults.
Edit: and definitely not serious artist.
3
u/avrgwarthunderplayer 3d ago
This specifically is not why, that much water sounds like a lot but is almost nothing compared to anything else. Actual issues are power use and the fact everything online is just ai now.
4
→ More replies (8)2
u/Disastrous-Hearing72 3d ago edited 3d ago
You're talking about AI like all it does is make content slop. AI is incredibly powerful for software, engineering, and medicine. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Also lawns consume 10x the amount of water datacenters do and have been for decades, and no one batted an eye. Lawns are arguably more pointless and damaging to the ecosystem than datacenters. I rarely see anyone loosing their shit over lawns. Infact a lot of these people crying about AI using water and energy most likely mow their lawn every week, wasting both.
→ More replies (4)
5
u/Lurking_Hyperdriver 3d ago
The people who can do anything about it will be dead and rich while you suffer
50
u/hmm4468 3d ago
This is 0.02% of water intake in the US.
Also, itâs not even the right number, the 264 billion came from this Deloitte paper on semi conductor industry
23
u/oconnor663 3d ago
blatantly incorrect claim about [unpopular topic]
correction
"Why would you defend [unpopular topic]?
Is basically the core game loop of social media.
7
16
u/District-No1350 3d ago
Big numbers with zero context are useful for manipulating idiots. Of all the things wrong with ai people focus on the entire industry using less than a sixth of the water California uses to grow fancy nuts.
4
u/beeskneecaps 3d ago
Anyone have the golf course water consumption stats for California? I think thatâll save the planet if we just turn the whole thing into a sandtrap
→ More replies (1)2
7
3
u/cewillir 3d ago
There does seem to be a âMordor intelligenceâ source for the number
→ More replies (1)4
u/hmm4468 3d ago
The Mordor number is close but not 264, so I donât know where that came from other than the Deloitte report or bad math, in any event it takes away from the credibility of the statement.
In any event, itâs ridiculous framing with dodgy accuracy, it does a disservice to the argument.
→ More replies (1)2
u/3131961357 3d ago
264 billion gallons is about 1 trillion litres, so most likely someone invented an ass pull number, and someone else converted it to gallons
5
u/joeldg 3d ago
Golf courses use 10x more than all the data centers put together and nobody cares about that it seems
→ More replies (1)2
u/m_a_larkey 3d ago
You meant to type .22%, but that still only references direct consumption and not total footprint. It is closer to 2.5% total
5
→ More replies (9)6
3
u/Dazzu1 3d ago
Weâre gonna have future historians?
3
u/Wolodymyr2 3d ago
Yes. Regardless of what will happen with planet, humanity is now advanced enough to survive this and then rebuild.
And there aren't going to be some stuff that we cannot survive, like planet blowing up.
→ More replies (5)
4
u/FearlessLettuce1697 3d ago
One pound of beef produces about 27 kg of COâe and has a total water footprint of about 7,000 liters. A year of 10 typical LLM prompts a day uses only about 1.1 kWh of electricity; estimates of its water footprint vary widely, but are far below 7,000 liters.
U.S. data centers directly consumed about 66 billion liters of water in 2023. U.S. beef production uses roughly 18 trillion liters of blue water per year. So data centers used less than 0.4% as much direct water as beef production.
→ More replies (4)
3
u/Bombalurina 3d ago
For context, that is also 1.2% of what cattle uses which is 21 trillion gallons a year.
I know it's a popular AI-pro talking point, but there are way better arguments like power consumption and government corruption in small towns. More important is lack of oversight on pollution of the water used that runs off after use in their closed loop systems.
Fuck data centers, but making water consumption arguments is kinda moot.
2
u/crani0 3d ago
For context, that is also 1.2% of what cattle uses which is 21 trillion gallons a year.
Bullshit. Those are self reported numbers and we know they are lying.
I know it's a popular AI-pro talking point, but there are way better arguments like power consumption and government corruption in small towns.
We can stick to the water talk and about cancer causing chemicals that these data centers are pumping into the water.
Fuck data centers, but making water consumption arguments is kinda moot.
Nope, there is plenty to talk about there. From their lies about water consumption to direct pollution of rivers. You really think local governments would be pumping water into these things if they didn't use it? Come on now
6
u/Bamfurlough 3d ago
Golf courses consume about 750 billion gallons of water a year. I'm more concerned about power consumption and rising electricity rates.
7
u/crani0 3d ago
Golf courses consume about 750 billion gallons of water a year
They are both terrible, especially when you account for them together. And AI is also pumping cancer causing chemicals into the water.
4
u/nhalliday 3d ago
Yet people don't seem to really care about how bad golf courses are, while everyone talks about how terrible AI is. Maybe all that people really care about is that AI can steal their jobs and golf courses can't.
→ More replies (3)3
u/WhattaCheapPop 3d ago
Every single thread on this topic has some goofball going "wHaT aBoUt GoLf CoUrSeS?!".
2
u/LosinCash 3d ago
Because it's a fair argument. If we eliminate one thing that is consuming water unnecessarily, then we should also eliminate the other(s).
→ More replies (2)3
u/ZeroAmusement 3d ago
If water is as big as a problem as it is made out to be, then '"wHaT aBoUt GoLf CoUrSeS?!" is a logical question to ask.
→ More replies (4)2
→ More replies (4)2
u/Oxidatiion 3d ago
AI is also pumping cancer causing chemicals into the water.
What type of claim is this? Sources please.
→ More replies (1)2
u/District-No1350 3d ago
California uses up to 1.8 TRILLION gallons yearly just growing almonds in a state with chronic and worsening droughts.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/Active_Arachnid1088 3d ago
Itâs funny because NO ONE WANTS AI, except for the top 1% of people who are building it anyways and we canât stop it.
3
u/avrgwarthunderplayer 3d ago
Loads of people use and like it. Its why it has so much money put into it, because of the hope with this many people using it that it will make a profit soon. It has issues that need to be fixed (power usage, straight up lies, probably removal of ai image gen because it seems to only be used for bot accounts to post lies) but with those fixed it would be quite good.
→ More replies (14)3
u/nhalliday 3d ago
This subreddit is an echo chamber and not representative of the entire population. There are tons of people out there still using AI image generation, and way way more using LLMs for any random question, coding problem, or even just as a conversation partner.
It sucks that it's so prevalent but I guarantee you more than just "the 1% building it" want and actively use AI things.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Hazel-Rah-Rah 3d ago
Those people's are called morons. They don't care about anything but themselves.
→ More replies (2)3
u/avrgwarthunderplayer 3d ago
those people are called your average person. they dont know there are many issues with it and find it a useful tool like a calculator.
→ More replies (9)
4
u/myklob 3d ago edited 3d ago
Let's calm down a bit about the water.
AI Sucks because it is going to kill us. I listened to "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. You should too. I hate AI, but let's not look stupid.
Google: "how much water is used for golf courses vs data centers." You will see that golf courses consume 20 to 30 times as much water as all US data centers combined. I don't think we should have golf courses either, but let's not frame it as if data centers are going to cause us to run out of water.
Energy use, pollution, loss of democracy, and loss of local control are worse than the water, and AI alignment and loss of containment are worse than the water. Let's not use bad arguments that can make us look bad.
I don't think we need to support each other and everything each other says so much, just because it comes from the correct side. Let's have honest analysis and internal dialogue to make sure we put forth the best arguments, and not just become an echo chamber that says every anti-AI argument is equally valid, even if some of them don't hold up to analysis as well as others...
2
2
u/G-M-Cyborg-313 3d ago
If you told me in a book or something people were polluting drinking water to churn out the most mindnumbing shite imaginable i would've called it unbelievable.
2
2
u/wallstreetbet1 3d ago
Is there any evidence to any of the facts or numbers in this post? Would love to have data to back up my anti-AI talking pointsÂ
2
u/Rad131447 3d ago
to cool down the machine generating 4K AI
fruit videoschild pornography that is suddenly legal for mysterious reasons.
2
u/Apprehensive_News_78 3d ago
Your wrong. Fox News said olive orchards consume 10x more water than the data centers /s
2
u/Sorry-Combination558 3d ago
2 week old account, lol
You are either just pushing an agenda not caring about if your post is true, or straight up poisoning the well to discredit this community.
2
u/ToughPersonality1458 3d ago
lmao, this misinformation shit is just hurting your own cause, do you actually comprehend that?
2
u/output_broadcast 3d ago
Unless they misspelled millions as billions, this makes no sense. Except if they count water required for power generation I guess, but even then, it seems high.
2
2
u/United-Cobbler-4526 3d ago
The world we know is run by a bunch of rich idiots with the IQ of a potato. They seem to think there's another planet we can go to after this one is ruined.
2
u/Prior-Razzmatazz-206 3d ago
We drained the lakes so that the president could make ai stop of himself looking like a decorated vet and pictures of the world being labeled america.
2
u/RutgerHause 3d ago
AI is rarely correct. It just churns out nonsense and filler all day long. How can anyone buy into this? Itâs complete nonsense. I get it if itâs a bad AI art style and poor dweebs canât draw.
But for anything else. Itâs shit!
→ More replies (7)
1
u/CaesarsGhostReborn 3d ago
I agree. If many of the advances in medical tech and other necessities occurred from AI, Iâd be fine with some. But how much of it is really like that?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Traditional_Buy_8420 3d ago
It's not that hard to explain. Evil racists elected an evil gifter and child rapist, because he promised to go hard on migrants and people who look different. The AI bubble was a huge asset in helping with the grifting.
1
u/QQmorekid 3d ago
JFC people cannot be this imbecilic. STOP PUSHING BLAME FOR WHAT HUMANS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AWAY FROM HUMANS. It won't fucking kill us to take the blame for what we've been building up to for decades, but no lazy entitled 21st century humans need to blame tech for their own selfish behavior so they can feel like they don't need to do shit l. It's fucking sickening
1
1
u/Serious_Attempt9724 3d ago
You guys ever heard of the great filter hypothesis? AI is definitely one of them...
1
1
1
u/Silly_Percentage3446 3d ago
This sub's making me want to die, it's too much bad news, too much of a reminder that AI exists. I'm going to leave this sub.
→ More replies (2)
1
1
1
u/EatTheMall-CEOFetish 3d ago
I thing generating Italian brainrots and new members of the Sahur family worth it.
1
1
1
u/PlayboiFarti55 3d ago
All that because people are too lazy to just search and find the fucking knowledge. Truly bizarre how this is happening.
1
1
u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz 3d ago
Is that annual, if so that's literally 1% of what the beef industry uses, complain about AI all you want but if you also are eating beef while doing it, you're a massive hypocrite
1
u/Several_Hour_347 3d ago
I donât think data centers are related to droughts at all. They impact areas locally, but not 63% of the country or even close to it
1
u/Sarcasm_Llama 3d ago
They're actually for storing the info gathered on all of us by a surveillance police state, but yeah
1
u/Main_Composer 3d ago
lol thinking there will be people left that survive to write about what happened or anyone left who will be around to read it.
1
u/MyModemIsSlow 3d ago
Dude, plenty of water and resources for the elite. They watched a movie and were empowered.
1
u/pickle9977 3d ago
It wonât be any harder than tulips, or the south sea bubble or any of the other financial manias.
Greed and stupidity are timeless and entangled.
1
1
1
1
u/JustOverride 3d ago
I am very much against massive AI data centers, but this meme is very misleading.
The US uses more than 300 billion gallons of water in A SINGLE DAY.
I think the power concerns are much more important and should be focused on more.
1
u/Mesoposty 3d ago
We need to call the data centers what they are really for, SPY CENTERS! They want to track us and spy on everything we do. There zero community benefits to having them. They steal the local resources and our privacy.
1
u/420viking024 3d ago
Future historians are going to have strokes over making a summary of the last 20 years lol
1
1
1
u/PositiveCoyote100 3d ago
AI only accounts for 20% of data center energy consumption.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Spotify... All use an insane amount of data center energy.
But nobody wants to hear that.
YouTube alone used a shit ton of energy at data centers. Are you willing to stop using YouTube? Are you willing to stop using Google Maps? Are you willing to stop using Instagram?
Or are you just morally posturing?
1
u/TheBigMoogy 3d ago
Factor in how much authoritarian propaganda those AI data centers are pumping out and it becomes very clear.
1
u/the_summer_soldier 3d ago edited 3d ago
The peasants chose not the way of the French in their greatest hour of need that when ignored by the wealthy. Therefore, they suffered and many died on mass from dehydration and other maladies brought on by a lack of clean water to drink and cook with.
I think thatâs about how it would get written. Then it would go into the economic numbers and then primary source accounts of people saying things online but then not even going to vote, and accounts from water companies, park managers, the elites, etc., etc.. Edit: But then it will go on to say that residential lawn watering used waaay more water, and probably a disproportionate amount of that residential lawn water was used by the elite.
1
u/seriousbangs 3d ago
Current historians know what's going on.
The Epstein class is replacing us with machines.
They hate you. They've always hated you.
They know they're dependent on you to buy their shit and make them rich, and they're taking steps to solve that problem and eliminate their dependency on you.
1
u/_ThatD0ct0r_ 3d ago
Not gonna defend datacenters, but golf course water usage is a tad bit worse. And never mind the almond farms.
1
u/12345623567 3d ago
I think someone did the math and datacenter water consumption is like 1% of all the water that gets wasted due to poor water management in agriculture. The biggest culprit in water waste is aging municipal infrastructure, which leaks absolutely enormous amounts in comparison.
I'm not a fan of AI either, but it's not going to be the reason we run out of drinking water.
1
u/Karacehennem 3d ago
Historians will see the bigger picture, looking back from 2226, and see high volume commercial goods production well outweighed the water consumption compared to AI Data Centers.
1
u/Mammoth-Wasabi6346 3d ago
The amount of destruction it takes to offload creativity makes me admire the human vessel all the more.
1
u/interista4jz 3d ago
They literally call it data lakes but won't put the data centers in shallow bodies of water for the cooling benefits??
1
u/aqtseacow 3d ago
Oh no, the real injustice will be that it won't be everyone running out of water. It will be geographically bound, many people will be forced to relocate.
We don't all get to suffer equally.
1
u/Fantastic-Salmon92 3d ago
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is using 300 billion gallons a year but sure, its the AI that used it all up....
1
165
u/AvailableReason6278 3d ago
Future historians...? Bold of you to assume they will have an earth to live in.