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.
Comment on What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The water gets used over and over and over in the data center. It’s in a loop. The reporting that data centers consume vast quantities of water completely misunderstand the core concept of a water loop.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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?
disregardable@lemmy.zip 3 weeks 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.
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is exactly why I asked, hoping for more information like this.
👍
valar@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
That is not the conclusion of the video you linked
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
From the video:
He even mentions how US corn uses 80x more water than worldwide AI use; with 40% of that corn burned as ethanol.
nightwatch_admin@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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…
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That link shows Altman saying current datacenters use closed loop systems and make vague rhetorical questions. That’s not a source
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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.
over_clox@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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…
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I appreciate it. <3