Source

Alt Text: The cartoon illustrates the problem of water use in the AI age: a farmer’s child and his mother are pumping a little water from a well for their daily use. Two knights in armor, transporting a large, spherical water container on wheels, come by and say, “The King wishes to make more avatars of himself as a Ghibli character.”
In the background, a castle sits enthroned on a hill. The cartoon illustrates the excessive water consumption required for AI model queries.

  • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
    35·
    23 hours ago

    AI data centers use a fuckton of water. And before you say self host, this comic is directed at the other 99.9% of consumers.

    • yucandu@lemmy.world
      2·
      8 hours ago

      I understand they use water in a closed loop for cooling, but… that’s a closed loop. It isn’t consuming water. Where did you get the idea that it was?

        • yucandu@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 hours ago

          That’s shifted from AI to data centers in general, and most of what they’re complaining about is the power generation. I live in Ontario, we get our electricity from nuclear and hydro.

          • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            Do you think that AI doesn’t use data centers? What do you think that the huge surge in building data centers is for?

            Literally at the top of the article I linked:

            With larger and new AI-focused data centers, water consumption is increasing alongside energy usage and carbon emissions.

            Also from the article:

            A medium-sized data center can consume up to roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes, equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households. Larger data centers can each “drink” up to 5 million gallons per day, or about 1.8 billion annually, usage equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.

            And worse:

            Data center water usage closely parallels energy usage and carbon emissions. As data centers use more energy for their typical data center operations and to meet AI requests, they consume larger amounts of water to cool their processor chips, so as to avoid overheating and potential damage. Similarly, as energy use increases in data centers, so do carbon emissions.

            So, no, it’s very much not only about the power for the data centers, although that is one component. And it’s fantastic that you live in an area with renewable hydro power, but that doesn’t help data centers built in areas that aren’t served by renewables.

            • TheColonel@reddthat.com
              1·
              3 hours ago

              I think it’s damning that both the account you’re referring to and the one I was arguing with earlier are both likely to be bots, paid shills, or both trying to spread disinformation about how harmful and wasteful AI data centers are!

              Who wants to trade away clean water and land to shitty AI facilities? I mean, except for oligarchs who want to cover the world in data centers.

      • yucandu@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 hours ago

        No I’m not understanding how it’s a problem. How does an AI datacenter “consume” water? Where does it go?

      • LillaApan@feddit.org
        3·
        11 hours ago

        If everybody would self host and run their machines… Would that be efficient? Would use a fuckton of energy as well, and I doubt it’s all solar. Plus, the models they use base on work done before (energy used) unless all training is done at home… Unlikely