The Water Footprint of AI

shaky-carrousel•4 minutes ago

The issue with AI datacenters was never about water. Water is an easily dismissable strawman that sloppers love to bring on.

The real issue with AI datacenters is the huge amounts of wasted energy, after decades of energy efficiency efforts.

pcl•about 1 hour ago

”AI's global water footprint could reach 4.2–6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027”

This is about as much as the annual consumption of the California almond farms.

(An acre-foot is approximately 1200 cubic meters.)

https://www.c-win.org/cwin-water-blog/2022/7/11/california-a...

tempfile•11 minutes ago

This comparison sounds to me like it is downplaying the significance of the numbers. California's almond-growing is another gross environmental crime, which is regularly controversial in California.

bigDinosaur•4 minutes ago

That's because the Californian almond industry is exclusively located in California, unlike the global data centre industry.

garciaperales•4 minutes ago

exizt88•25 minutes ago

Water consumption of AI is a non-issue. Why even spend research and policymaking resources on this?

sevenzero•19 minutes ago

Misconception of the year. If you can guarantee the steam it produces rains down in areas that actually re-join the water cycle easily, you might be right (even though you still have to cover the just in time demand). You can not guarantee that though.

Best regards, European person where lakes dry out atm.

perks_12•4 minutes ago

They are not drying up because of AI datacenters and especially not because of European datacenters.

While man-made climate change is undoubtedly real, the yearly "our lakes dry up"-media cycle is not proof of it at all. Check if the return to normal in November will make the news.

boxed•7 minutes ago

I think you mean "re-join the FRESHWATER cycle"? Because obviously it rejoins the global water cycle.

trolleski•18 minutes ago

For who?

throwfaraway135•about 1 hour ago

I agree that water is an important resource but the wording of "consumption" always rubbed me the wrong way. Is the water contaminated with chemicals? Maybe heat? Can people or wildlife consume it? Can you use rainwater?

swiftcoder•39 minutes ago

> I agree that water is an important resource but the wording of "consumption" always rubbed me the wrong way

While the Earth is (mostly[1]) a closed system when it comes to water, any particular region on Earth is not a closed system with respect to clean drinking water.

Deplete groundwater reserves faster than they refill? No more water for you. Raise the ambient temperature far enough that the rainclouds go somewhere cooler? No more water for you. As long as your usage is below the replacement rate, all seems well. Imbalance the system, and you have indeed "consumed" your local water supply.

> Is the water contaminated with chemicals? Maybe heat?

Typically yes. Definitely yes.

> Can people or wildlife consume it?

With enough water purification infrastructure, sure. I'm not aware of very many datacenters installing such infrastructure.

> Can you use rainwater?

It's all rainwater, whether directly or indirectly. The question is what would have benefited from that rainwater had it not been redirected to a datacenter?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

tempfile•14 minutes ago

> Imbalance the system, and you have indeed "consumed" your local water supply.

Right, but this is not what is reported by "water consumption". It would be much better to have some kind of index (probably multiple) that estimates how close a particular feature of the water system is to a problem. Is the temperature too high, is there too high a concentration of some contaminant, etc etc.

113•about 1 hour ago

You can't drink it once it's gone through a bunch of mouldy pipes, no.

The Water Footprint of AI

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