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Comment on Generative AI is a societal disaster

Globally, data centers use 18.2 billion liters of water per year. California almond production uses 6-10 trillion liters per year. A little perspective may be in order here.

(According to the numbers I was able to find in ten minutes of googling trying to reproduce more reliable studies I’ve seen elsewhere. Feel free to correct me if you have better numbers. Truth is more important than being right.)

Energy usage looks like is projected to be around 3% by 2030, which is more worthy of concern. The water thing, for everything I can see or find, is vastly overblown and there are much lower hanging fruit to pick.

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andyburke@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
We shouldn't be growing almonds in a desert and yet you hold that up as a defense for AI.

🤷‍♂️

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- Womble@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Alternatively, shutting down the entire internet (which is what removing datacentres is) for the sake of growing 0.1% more almonds in California is not a good trade off IMO.
  
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- MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Attacking data centers over water use when it is utterly dwarfed by the almond and dairy industries is weird priorities to me.
  
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ninjaphysics@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The water thing is not overblown if you consider that data centers will only use potable water and will not be able to use treated water. Per just one of many studies:

Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.

With climate change and the exacerbation of droughts around the world, this puts any source of fresh surface or groundwater at risk of drying up.

Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater, and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption.

This is a growing environmental justice issue (and data centers encourage further energy poverty that I haven’t even addressed, much less the increasing ratio of usage for industry vs residential), and to ignore that we as humans cannot replenish or increase freshwater supplies with any meaningful scale to support life, this becomes a dire issue.

I for one would much rather have water and affordable energy for communities.

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- MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Why start with data centers and not almonds or dairy? The difference in water usage is staggering.
  
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Viiksisiippa@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Almonds you can eat and get nutrition and energy from. Growing almonds creates jobs.

AI gives you falsified images and videos. Companies use AI to get rid of jobs.

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- BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  On one hand, you’re right.
  
  On the other hand, you’re missing the point.
  
  Jobs aren’t the the goal of life. People need to remember that. Our current system of distributing resources is broken if we don’t have enough jobs, but we could change the system rather than forcing everyone to work when it’s not needed.
  
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- MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  We could eat just fine if almonds were never grown, and save 1000x the water that goes to data centers. That would have a far better conservation effect and hurt absolutely no one.
  
  Also, we’re getting rid of jobs in the falsified images and videos industry? Must be if that’s what AI is.
  
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