"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. :)
One seriously wonders if GenX didn't manage to hit a sweet spot for technological availability ahead of everything just going to seed.
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.
was 50$ bounty, now 300$ - that's an unusually brazen stance.
This article feels a bit biased and I would love to see HN's take.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
