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.
Why does it consume water? Isn’t it in a closed loop?
It would be, if AI companies cared at all about anything but their wallet.
They also use a fuckton of electricity, many sources of electricity consume water.
They also require a fuckton of electronics, which require water to be manufactured.
I’m still not understanding how this is a water problem. Even in an open loop system, where do you think the water goes?
The same place where every other form of water consumption goes: to the water cycle.
If your argument is “that evaporated water will just rain again” then you’re arguing that water consumption is not real, and people should not care about wasting water.
That is not true. Most of the water of the water cycle is in the ocean. When you consume water, you are turning 100% high value fresh water into mostly low value salt water.
I’ve yet to see any actual evidence that any significant number of people are using evaporative cooling, and not just what everyone else uses when liquid cooling electronics - a closed loop.
Here’s a report by the UK government. Page 4 contains basically the same thing as I said. Which sources if you wanna go deeper:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688cb407dc6688ed50878367/Water_use_in_data_centre_and_AI_report.pdf