Comment on What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?

RamRabbit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• valar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  That is not the conclusion of the video you linked

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  • RamRabbit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    From the video:

    Even under the maximlist goals of AI companies, the projected increase of water use is small compared to what cities and industries already use.

    He even mentions how US corn uses 80x more water than worldwide AI use; with 40% of that corn burned as ethanol.

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    • nightwatch_admin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It’s amazing that Hank can come to this conclusion since basically every genai company is hiding their resource usage. (Well, actually not that amazing as Hank has gone completely on the side (and gets sponsored by) these companies and is strongly biased).
      Have a look at eg pivot-to-ai.com/…/how-much-water-do-the-data-cent…

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      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        That link shows Altman saying current datacenters use closed loop systems and make vague rhetorical questions. That’s not a source

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    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Corn ethanol being stupid doesn’t make AI less stupid.

      There’s plenty of stupidity out there. That logic would make everything useless.

      By that logic, no one outside the US would care about voting, since they already reached peak stupidity, so voting for a better president in Argentina will not get rid of trump.

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      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It is useful if you’re trying to figure out what to focus on. In this case, the concern is wasteful water usage. If you point to a larger area of wasteful water consumption, it would make more sense to target that first.

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    • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I made a point to update my post, not only with your link, but also with your timestamped link.

      This is why I’m here, to ask questions and seek answers…

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      • RamRabbit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I appreciate it. <3

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• Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Welcome to Lemmy. “AI bad” downvoting will always happen at anything that symbolizes sympathy, even when you’re just providing an objective factual take. Thanks for your informative post.

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• over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  So, similar to a vehicle radiator, just larger scale?

  Well, if that’s the case, yeah antifreeze isn’t good for anyone, but still a proper closed loop cooling system isn’t exactly wasting water is it?

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  • disregardable@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    still a proper closed loop cooling system isn’t exactly wasting water is it?

    If you take good water from underground, it evaporates, and you’re in a drought-prone area, your area effectively just lost the water. Even if you’re not in a drought-prone area, you’re never going to have easy access to that clean, underground water again.

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271

    I found this, and it has a cool overview of water towers and such.

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    • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      This is exactly why I asked, hoping for more information like this.

      👍

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