AI is Taking Water from the Desert

Another article that completely fails to provide useful numbers.

"Public data hint at the potential toll of this approach. Researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year, for example, that global AI demand could cause data centers to suck up 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of freshwater by 2027."

Is that a lot or a little? How does it compare to other industries? https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts... says CA almonds use 3.5e9 m3 == .9 Tgallons of water. So global AI demand will consume 1-2x the amount of water for CA to create almonds. Alternatively if it takes 872x water per unit of wine (https://muse.union.edu/mth-063-01-f18/2018/09/16/how-much-wa...) and the US drinks 33m hectoliters = .87B gallons of wine == .76 Tgallons of water, then AI will globally consume 2x the US consumption of water for wine.

If I had to choose spending water on AI, almonds, or wine, I would choose AI.

Though, I would love to have a dashboard on ChatGPT telling me that this query consumed X almonds worth of water.

A year ago these articles were about how destructive server farms for crypto mining were. Now those same servers have pivoted to "AI" and the articles about them are almost the same.

Perhaps we will always find a use for this computing power, as long as governments allow it to be built.

Great, another '{Anything} is running in our datacenters, destroying our planet' article.

I wonder how much clickbait is taking water from the desert. And as much as I'd _love_ to read about how you rode around in an Uber on a hot day, you're not going to get me to sign up for your website with that.

I enjoy the implication that these massive cities we've built in the scorching desert that don't have any water of their own aren't to blame in the slightest. Like it's impossible to build server infra anywhere else than one of the hottest places on the continent.

If only we had some neutral mechanism for allocating resources like electricity to productive uses! I guess we'll just have to ask the fine ladies at The Atlantic which of them are worthwhile.

> Exactly how much power does this Goodyear data center use, and how much of it is renewable?

You could probably see the Palo Verde nuclear plant if you climb up on the roof of that data center...

What happens to the water after the data center is done with it?

Must say, there are hilarious roasts here.

It is amazing how people complain about the energy and resources requirements for running AI while fail to notice the massive amount that is being used by the crypto mining, that at least in energy is more than what use several industrialized first world countries.

At least AIs have some objective value.