- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
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There are lots of places where the only impediment to additional usable water is simply building a facility to treat more water, facilities which these AI data center owners are themselves paying for (usually indirectly via a bill from the water utility). The article also doesn’t mention any reasons whatsoever why water usage is an issue. It isn’t like dehydrating crops in the Sahara will be impacted by water cooled data centers in Columbus, OH.
Because many cities are already draining aquifers which aren’t being replenished due to the lower rains and higher demand, and once those are gone, both servers and people will be absolutely fucked?
Generally true and that’s why I often read these articles scratching my head. Make them closed loop! They almost always use chillers…
Water use becomes a concern if the water is moved too far and/or too fast like your Sahara example.
If it’s a closed loop system is there anything better than water that can be used?
Milk :D Build a heat pasteurization plant next to your data center and you can use the server heat for something productive.
I was wondering about this. Why wouldn’t it be closed loop? My buddies and I allegedly built a moonshine still in high school and the coiled pipe or hose coming out the top recondenses the liquid that boils off. Why not do something similar and pump the hot water under snow covered sidewalks to melt them and then send it back to the data center to get heated again once it has lost enough heat?
Evaporative cooling. Low cost.
I’ve never seen any of these articles explain what this means. How is generative AI “using up” water. When a search uses a liter or whatever of water, what is happening to this water?
Every time that happens, a little more water is burned and a little more carbon is released.
This is just nonsense that makes me think the author doesn’t know either.
Water is often used in cooling servers. But it’s contained and reused. It doesn’t go anywhere, it’s the vehicle to move heat from the servers to wherever else. In a pipe. In a closed loop. All these doomsday AI articles act like water is being lost permanently due to the use of these servers. Even if the water was escaping the closed system…did no one pay attention to the water cycle unit in grade school?!
It’s not a sealed system like a personal computer uses. They’re on a huge huge scale. They use evaporation / cooling towers. But those lose a certain amount of water to evaporation which needs to be replaced regularly.
just… use rain water and condensation pipes. Idk why that would be an issue at all
It also generates waste water that has to be sent to a treatment plant they can’t dump it back into the environment because it’s so concentrated with minerals
Because it’s not using hot steam, but vapor, it’s more like sweating.
The heat exchangers are sprayed with misted water, which evaporates and takes away heat. But the resulting vapor is still only slightly above ambient temperature and can’t be reasonably condensated.
why can’t they use piss, instead, though?
Yup, water is good for health. Please make sure AI is kept well hydrated.
“water just comes from rain so we just need more rain clouds!” - them probably
because they genuinely don’t know how the water cycle works
Also those people…“We need to ban all forms of weather manipulation technology, because space lasers or something something…”
So what you are saying is that if it is permanently cloudy and never sunny anymore in the future it is because of the people who love AI and hate solar power? I could see that happening.
Try Pabst Blue Ribbon or a reasonably priced malt liquor and see what happens
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