Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7
Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 12 hours ago
TBH, if I had to choose, I'd rather have chocolate than "AI data centers".
These comparisons to existing uses of water besides cooling "AI data centers" ignore the fact that water use for "AI data centers" is additive. It is a _new_ use of water not seen before. As such, the comparisons to existing uses are unconvincing.
A bizarre "justification" such as "[existing use, e.g., chocolate] is permitted to deplete water supplies therefore [new use, e.g., AI data centers] should be permitted to deplete water supplies by similar amounts" does not scale. The supply of water is not unlimited. Not all new uses can be accomodated without affecting other uses.
This strange "reasoning" something like "so-and-so already does it" may appear to be based on some AI cheerleader notion of "fairness" but in reality it is based on a disregard for the limited nature of the resource, as if there is an unlimited supply. There is more money behind "AI" than chocolate. Truthfully, in the event of shortage, "fair" allocation where every use is accomodated is not realistic.
People want chocolate. There are hundreds of years of history to prove it.^1 But do people want "AI". It is being forced on them. If they accept it, if they essentially have no choice, then is that the same as "wanting".
1. The history of "AI" is absurdly short by comparison. It includes long periods of years where interest in "AI" was lost. Perhaps an AI cheerleader can dig up something about "Chocolate Winters".
> These comparisons to existing uses of water besides cooling "AI data centers" ignore the fact that water use for "AI data centers" is additive. It is a _new_ use of water not seen before. As such, the comparisons to existing uses are unconvincing.
No, I'm not ignoring that. I'm saying two things:
1) When put next to existing water usage, data center water usage stops looking as crazy large as is implied in TFA. All data centers for all compute purposes in the EU used as much water in 2024 as the creation of a single food product used in 2019. That's important perspective to have when we're talking about additive water usage, because it hints out what percentage increase we're talking about [0].
2) I don't accept the presumption that existing usage has preeminence now and forever by simple virtue of being older. We should be able to look at all water usage that currently stands and decide which usages are worth keeping and which are worth adding.
You're welcome to disagree that data centers (AI and otherwise, because non-AI workloads are included in the numbers) are worth more than chocolate, but it should be as part of a fair comparison between them on the merits, with no grandfathering chocolate and agriculture in just because the chocolate companies and farmers got there before anyone was paying attention to monitoring water usage.
[0] If you can find a percentage increase from data centers figure that would be even better, but I can't find absolute numbers for total water usage in the EU to construct such a figure.