Comment by llm_nerd
Articles basically pander to the anti-AI crowd now -- knowing this group will run and share stories like this on all the socials -- and it just isn't useful.
Firstly, they're talking about data centres, not "AI". AI is just the boogeyman now and 100% of usage suddenly is imagined to be ChatGPT exchanges. In reality it is mostly servicing sites like this, ad networks, backing up your iCloud photos, running your bank, etc.
Secondly, price and regulate a resource appropriately and this wouldn't happen. The only data centres that run evaporative cooling do so because it's the least expensive option, and because it's allowed. In every normal place they run a closed circuit and the water usage is basically a rounding error.
Further, articles like this never give a context. 94 million m2 (the 2030 forecast for every data centres across Europe combined, not just "AI") sounds super large. Unfathomably large. Paris uses double this. Of course Paris is a massive city, but then think of every other large city across Europe, every farm, etc. It ends up being a small slice, for something that is very important in people's lives.
> In reality it is mostly servicing sites like this, ad networks, backing up your iCloud photos, running your bank, etc.
In reality, GPUs slurp a lot of energy, and it would be missing the current situation if you don't think new data centers will include a lot more GPUs than they did just 5 years ago. Not saying the new data centers will mostly be GPUs, but current context surely changed the calculations of what a "modern" data center should contain.
> price and regulate a resource appropriately and this wouldn't happen [...] In every normal place they run a closed circuit
Pricing and regulation doesn't suddenly mean foreign investors won't try to get an already scarce resource allocated to them. And regardless of how closed the circuit is, once the water goes to the data center, it cannot also go to other uses, so the farmer ends up with less water.