you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 29 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (10 children)

This has been done to death; that's not how water consumption works in a datacenter and most of the water quotes you hear are about construction not operations. Yes there are outliers and cases of running off tap but those are exceedingly rare and usually taken out of context. The water use just flat out isn't an issue, or at the very least isn't a substantial one.

Electrical power, heat, and noise pollution, on the other hand,...

  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

    Yeah, it upsets me when I see people posting completely batshit reasonings to make a point that is totally reasonable in the first place. It dilutes the argument against hyperscale datacenters and AI.

    I did the math a while back because my workplace was talking about using more AI, and I'd need to run about 50,000 queries to copilot to use the same amount of electricity that it took to drive my car to work. If everyone using AI got one extra work from home day, it would more than offset their AI usage for an entire year.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

    Me: prompts a frontier LLM one time to do 30 minutes of my work in 45 seconds

    Randos on the internet: "omg you're killing the planet"

    Me, who once left a Minecraft technic modpack game running in the background while I had a 2hr goon session, consuming orders of magnitude more power for nothing productive:

    awkward puppet monkey gif

    Yeah, there are lots of reasons to hate AI, and resource consumption is absolutely one of them; but people seem to miss the forest for the trees when it comes to exactly what parts are problematic

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 20 hours ago*

    Shiiiiiiit

    I've got this chonker running a couple of game servers, I can hear it humming away through a wall right now. If I scrapped this machine and switched over to AWS or Azure, it would save so much electricity.

    Like fuck I'm gonna do that though, cloud machines are expensive.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

    The water use just flat out isn’t an issue

    It's an enormous issue when you're on the hook for inflated municipal water bills.

    But I'll concede "you posted an image, so you're responsible for $100B in sunk costs" is just scapegoating.

    The resources are wasted whether or not a given individual makes an AI Slop flyer for their local Swingles spouse swap meet up.

    Electrical power, heat, and noise pollution, on the other hand,…

    Also all big issues.

    But it's kinda crazy to tell people who have seen their water bills jump $50+/mo the day after construction breaks ground that "Um, aktuly, water isn't an issue".

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

    Anyone complaining about AI water usage that doesn't also complain about golf courses and water-intense crops grown in deserts is, to me, not actually upset about water usage. They just hate AI and have latched on to the only thing that can justify their hatred without being abstract or complex.

    When a single almond uses more water than over 500 AI prompts, maybe we should be focusing on other things.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 17 hours ago

    The almond thing is actually propaganda put out by the beef industry as part of a widespread campaign to demonize plant based protein btw

    Also everyone complains about golf courses using irrigation, but no one complains about baseball fields, soccer fields, football fields, and public parks that all do the exact same thing, so maybe you're the one that isn't actually upset about water usage.

    Or maybe, black-and-white purity tests like this are stupid because they leave no room for nuance and productive conversation.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 18 hours ago* (2 children)

    Anyone complaining about AI water usage that doesn’t also complain about golf courses

    Isn't living next to a golf course.

    Yeah, people have materialistic views and materialistic concerns. If it's out of sight, it can easily be out of mind.

    But the thing about these mega-projects that pop up in your backyard practically overnight and immediately jack up the cost of living in your rural township is that they are highly visible.

    When a single almond uses more water than over 500 AI prompts

    I don't care, because I don't live next to an almond grove. But I do care when I live next to an AI prompts factory.

    Even then, we're rapidly approaching parity. You're weighing 1 trillion almonds/year against 100 trillion tokens consumed per year. And the number of tokens being consumed is rising rapidly, while the volume of almonds being produced are in decline.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago (1 child)

    The other thing to consider is that token usage is hopefully at its highest cost/token. As the market matures, it should stand to reason that efficiency for both data center structure and hardware should improve.

    We're looking at an extremely unregulated, poorly thought out, gold-rush type market that is trying to cash in as much as possible before reality comes in to smash it in the face. As long as we keep pushing, regulations should be able to mitigate a lot of the biggest issues we see with data centers.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 14 hours ago

    The other thing to consider is that token usage is hopefully at its highest cost/token.

    With the price of energy skyrocketing and a chip shortage constricting supplies? Doubtful.

    We’re looking at an extremely unregulated, poorly thought out, gold-rush type market that is trying to cash in as much as possible before reality comes in to smash it in the face.

    But, like with the financial crisis, nobody really expects the Tech Giants to be the ones that feel the pain. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei will die richer than the Pharaohs, no matter what happens next. It's the hillbilly schlubs in Jackson, Mississippi and Bastrop, Texas who are going to be eating shit when the turd pile finally tips over.

  • source
  • parent