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maybe they meant meat farms. meat uses more water than apparently anyone realizes or cares about. theres material to that reality, whether its acknowledged or not.
I think almonds use an inordinate amount of water.
Less than meat. But don’t just take my word for it: CA-Ag-Water-Use.pdf https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CA-Ag-Water-Use.pdf
Yeah, but how many people are eating that meat versus those almonds.
You think they’re just growing and throwing away the almonds or something? Sheesh, people will use the stupidest most twisted logic to justify their own shitty actions.
Those data are thrown off by Spiders Georg
I guess Lauren can try eating microchips
Though i agree that especially some US states push crops and setups that aren’t at all suited for their environment, use more water than they have.
Edit: right, and the corn thing.
Keep in mind that datacenters are pretty cool and can definitely serve the public without causing much of a problem. The datacenters we don’t want are the ones that are used to train and run LLM, as well as the ones that take power from homes and destroy the environment. There’s a big difference.
I don’t think you understand who data centers serve.
They monetize us and serve profits to their owners.
Where do you think your Lemmy instance is hosted? How do you think your call gets router when you call your mom?
No, you’re not understanding that there are other types of datacenters.
A datacenter is a building with a lot of computers. Not all of them are AI related, and in fact most aren’t.
Easily more than 90% of everything on the Internet and all telecommunications runs out of a datacenter.The thing people are currently, rightly, being opposed to are hyper scale data centers. Those tend to be filled with things like AI training or massive web services where all the pieces need to be close to each other to work efficiently.
Most data centers are similar in size and environmental impact to a shipping warehouse, but with power consumption a fair bit higher.
Any midsize city will have at least a few, if for no other reason than to handle telecommunications, and many businesses will have their own small one near their offices.Everything in a capitalist society serves profit to its owners. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a good we want to have around. It’d certainly be better and more efficient if my local telecom hub or hospital were publicly owned and managed with a service motive above a profit motive, but they’re not and I’d rather have both than not.
What I don’t need is open AI building a datacenter 32 times larger than the hospital and 128 times larger the the telecom hub to train AI models, fuck up the water and double my power bill.
That’s just called a business.
I happily rent a server so I can serve the thousands of users that interact with the FOSS project I’m part of.
If you think farms are for food wait till you find out what 40% of US corn is used for.
(it’s biofuel for cars)
and just wait till you find out what 60% of the remaining corn is used for
(it’s animal feed)
edit: and just wait till you find out how much water is used to artificially irrigate that corn
(something like 40 times as much as AI is estimated to use)
Almond farming in the US uses a significant amount of water too. Like yes, it’s for food, but the Almond farming in California uses more water than the cities of LA and SF combined.
Still less H2O intensive than meat production.
Absolutely. Outclasses data centers by a few orders of magnitude though… So far. Likely not for long.
I would also add Alfalfa and Nestle (bottled 2$ water to the list. Really though “technology connections” says if you took the corn for ethanol and replaced it with solar you could power all the electric cars. (I could be misremembering)
relevant Hank Green video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
Basically my (and from what I remember, his) point is, stop thinking water use is the problem with AI datacenters. Even power use isn’t the problem. We have all the technology and solutions necessary to build all this compute responsibly and sustainably, it’s more than doable, it wouldn’t even be particularly difficult.
The problem is hyperscaling and the lack of regulation (or straight up ignored regulation) that enables it, and the greedy people and corrupt politicians that want it to happen and let it happen. This is yet another thing that basically no other country in the world has real problems with besides the US of A, because in no other country is the shit your datacenters are doing legal. By barking up the wrong tree you are delaying the realisation that the problem is in your system and nowhere else.
This is yet another thing that basically no other country in the world has real problems with besides the US of A
USA companies are trying to export their brand of lawlessness to other countries. Just ignore the regulations, pay a fine, if they can’t kill it in court, and carry on.
Is that water stat at the end right? jfc
Yup, American agricultures water usage ist notoriously inefficient, simply opening a valve and letting the water run down a slope to irrigate the area vs watering the plants. Also, the water pipes in the USA lose a lot more to leaks than Data centers could ever use.
I imagine a dystopia on which the AI is sentient, and forcing humans to keep its maintenance, by demanding water and minerals.
Food bubble is going to pop any day now.
Tbf they tried with Soylent, right?
Not even going to mention golf courses, huh?
Animal exploitation is not necessary though, and with only growing the plants for Humans, instead of also growing for non-human animals bred into existence to be killed, farms would use significantly less water.
Also, maybe we don’t need to grow almonds in the middle of a desert.
On the other hand, not being a farmer admittedly, I’d assume there’s some reason the almonds are grown there of all places rather than somewhere with cheaper water, is the climate good for them there or something, water consumption aside?
The climate is great. Historically they have been grown in similar areas. And don’t forget the cheap migrant labor.
California generational farming is wising up, but ever so slowly. Blue Diamond Almond company, I’d say, is about half its presence now since 2000. Before 2000 the irrigation canals was practically free-flowing year-round. It’s a cash crop – so if it can grow, you know. But yeah, it is still over-the-top for a naturally arid state.
Are you suggesting we don’t feed livestock? Real humane letting the cows starve to death…
Seriously I don’t understand what you’re even getting at here.
Eat them, and then don’t grow more.
I mean yeah but like… Agriculture.
