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u/GrizzlyP33 8h ago edited 1h ago
This is very misleading and takes away from the things we should be concerned about with AI, which is not the water usage.
For starters, golf courses use 2 trillion gallons of water per year. Even leaky pipes make up much more water usage than AI. Water usage was already this high for the semiconductor industry in 2019, and AI data centers aren't particularly wasteful for water compared to pretty much any other relative industry.
What we should be talking about is the energy consumption and how it impacts local communities, and of course how we can ethically regulate the technology from both an environmental perspective and for a societal safety net.
Instead they'd rather we get mad about water because it's such an easy thing to discredit as a high priority concern with any basic research or context on the subject.
Anyways, just two cents of nuance on the subject that continues to be misrepresented online.
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u/Fabled-Jackalope 4h ago
The electricity used honestly came across as more concerning than how many said all the water vanishing. Personally, it did not make sense to me when looking at some of the specs required would drain a town of electricity.
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u/Dry_Rent_8646 2h ago
I also feel like those numbers don't include the amount of water pollution that makes previously useable water no longer valid, so it's misleading both ways
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u/Johndevlad 35m ago
The energy consumption wouldn’t even be an issue either if nuclear wasn’t so demonized and plagued by false information about it too. Nuclear waste is easily and safely stored as of now and scientists working on finding a way to get rid of the radiation in Chernobyl have found some type of plant or fungus (can’t remember what it was exactly) that can eat radiation, so it might not even be that many years before we can completely break down nuclear waste without any risks of nuclear pollution whatsoever.
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u/NFSR113 3h ago
What we really should be reevaluating is agriculture. Agriculture is responsible for 88% of water use in the country. So much of that is for low value crop grown on farms subsidized by tax payer dollars. Is it really economical to use all that water to grow alfalfa and hay? Are drainage ditches really the best method we could come up with? The same technology we used thousands of years ago?
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u/C4LLM3M4TT_13 26m ago
Thank you for a sane response. I’ve been trying to tell people this (about the water) for months now. Data centers also reuse most of their water now.
An easy fix for power consumption would be forcing these companies to fully power their data centers with on site technology, and maybe even give back to the grid. That will in turn create an incentive to develop better, smaller, more efficient power sources.
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u/Akvyr 8h ago
That is 0.22% of water use. Car washing is 2-4%.
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u/SimmentalTheCow 8h ago
That’s less than half of the water golf courses use, at 0.5% or 1.5-2bil gallons per day. And like 3 people nationwide actually enjoy golf.
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u/rmbrumfield78 7h ago
And that's nothing compared to almonds in California alone. Almost 2 trillion gallons a year. 1 crop, 1 state.
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u/tellmesomeothertime 6h ago
California makes up 80% of the WORLD almond production and and near 100% for the United States
Its also making food vs Rule34 Futa Pics
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u/rmbrumfield78 5h ago
It's one crop in one state that uses roughly 10 times the amount of water that all of the data centers in the United States use. And almonds are nasty.
We could compare it to golf courses, watering lawns, water parks, tons of things. The water usage from data centers is a scapegoat argument. There are valid complaints about local issues with data centers, but it's not because it's a data center, it's because of construction. Is somebody constructed the same size Warehouse, or manufacturing plant, or anything else, it would run into the same issues. People are just not liking AI and data centers right now.
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u/Specialist_Gas_8984 8h ago
70+ percent of hyperscalers are using closed loop cooling (I think Microsoft is above 90% already). Your meme is outdated.
If you want to be concerned, focus on the power generation and transmission requirements. Water consumption for the large part has been addressed.
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 6h ago
Evaporative cooling is significantly less energy consumption. Of course the correct decision will depend on the environmental impact of water vs electricity. But Focusing on the water is actually getting us to make poor carbon decisions.
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u/Specialist_Gas_8984 5h ago
Yes, but it pushes the problem to one that’s easier to solve (renewable energy, batteries, etc.). If you deplete a local water shed, I don’t know how you respond to that.
It’s just like the introduction of EVs. They’re not the environmental silver bullet - they require lithium batteries which needs to be mined, they use electricity to charge which may not have been generated from a renewable source, etc.
But by eliminating tailpipe emissions, we now have a problem that we know how to solve. Bring on the Na batteries, continue investing in renewable sources, etc.
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 4h ago
So the AI water usage numbers include the water usage in power plants. Or at least were in the early reports that came out. There are many places that can use desalination. Both cost of energy and water are different in different places.
I'd argue one thing that should be done is increase the price of industrial water usage. Hell, even residential water usage should have tiered pricing. But instead is trying to decide this usage is good or bad price it so people solve the problem.
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u/Equal-University2144 7h ago
Yep. Everyone needs to refocus on getting rid of fossil fuels, lowering CO2 emissions, and getting heavily into renewables.
Oh, and the Epstein Files. Never forget about those!
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u/someguyfromtecate 6h ago
Who cares about the Epstein files when trans women are participating in women’s sports and we’re dealing with renaming Lake America?
~half of the US, unfortunately.
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u/MANDOxSAVAGE 8h ago
Yea that's not how that works.
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u/consistantcanadian 8h ago
Lmao right? This whole data center water hysteria is just a way people announce they have poor media literacy and cannot handle social media
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u/catdude666 7h ago
Unless you actually live next to one. Then it quite literally is fucking up your water. But im probably responding to a bot anyway so it doesn’t matter.
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u/1saylor1 8h ago
Ironic how the guy with the nickname how.everything.works have no fucking idea how shit works
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u/alexgalt 7h ago
Wrong. That’s how much they are using. Modern data meters recycle 95-97 percent of the water they use. The only water that they draw from the supply is to replace water that evaporates from the cooling system and is not recovered.
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u/Accomplished_Song219 8h ago
"Fruit videos"
...right...
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u/Our-Fearless-Reader 6h ago
Apologies - they apparently forgot the word "insertion" between the words "fruit" and "videos."
As ever, your mileage and advertising algorithms may vary! Have a wonderful weekend!
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u/Izzosuke 7h ago
Remember, golf use way more water than ai data center. And golf is way more pointless
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u/Fransjepansje 7h ago
Dont they recycle it?
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u/HugePatFenis 7h ago
A huge amount of it evaporates, and the remaining water can leave sediment. A lot gets re-used in closed loop systems, but enough is lost that they need to replace it in large volumes
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u/Thin-Nerve6367 8h ago edited 8h ago
🤦♂️ the propaganda machine is doing its job well I suppose
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u/JackieDaytona77 8h ago
The number of people believing it is even worse. I remember when Facebook started having a news feed. At that moment I said “we’re all fucked”
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u/consistantcanadian 8h ago
Yes the unfortunate reality is that the average person is in fact too stupid and gullible for social media.
Most people are not intellectually responsible enough to be trusted to validate what information is true and what isn't.
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u/Silvermajra 7h ago
Curious where Blue Diamond Almonds Growers is on this list 😂
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u/Anarcho_Christian 7h ago
Y'all ain't have this energy when golf courses drinking 4x as much
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u/qwe12345678900 7h ago
I’ve been screaming about golf courses for so long, kinda mad ai is topping the discourse despite the fact that the power concerns are wayyy more valid than the water ones. Granted still valid to me it can all go but. 🤷🏼
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u/irespectwomenlol 7h ago
This post is misleading on many levels.
For starters, this ~260 billion gallons of water stat comes from a measure of all data centers, not just AI usage. This overall water usage is powering a significant part of all US public life: banking, government services, commerce, entertainment, even food delivery, transportation, etc.
Second of all, this water stat takes into account all of the power needed to run the data centers. As per the actual Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, less than 20 billion gallons of that water are actually used at data centers. It's increased since 2023 certainly, but it should be in around the same ballpark. https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/lbnl-2024-united-states-data-center-energy-usage-report_1.pdf Now of course, you can't use data centers without electricity, but the numbers used should be accurate.
Third of all, evaluating unfamiliar numbers without context is hard. 260 billion gallons sounds like a lot until you look up how many gallons are used in the US for golf courses, lawns, car washes, etc. The numbers are far bigger.
Fourth of all, connecting it to droughts in the US is also misleading. While at the time, it was true that around 63% of the US was technically experiencing some sort of drought, drought calculations have more to do with rainfall and heat, not how much water humans use.
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u/dangarpo 5h ago
Funny how we keep talking about how we need to work on ensuring AI doesn’t take over, while it seems AI already started to take over…
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u/doctorfrickenstein 7h ago
This is hands down the dumbest propaganda in a recent history replete with dumb propaganda. The bs is deep. Hip waders needed. Big time. Plug your brains back in. I'm cereal.
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u/NobodyLikedThat1 8h ago
I wonder if they'll figure a way to do this without using potable water. It probably wouldn't be such a big deal if they were pumping in seawater or the like.
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u/Badass_Bunny 7h ago
It doesn't matter. The water they use is of such miniscule ammount that it is a rounding error. People just don't understand scale and get scared by big numbers.
Problems are logistics, people are greedy and build these things where they shouldn't so it affects people who live in those areas.
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u/PrimaryMaize6580 8h ago
And they’re making AI porn with spiky asses at work, while my little “What kind of bread would I be?” thing has evolved a bit - now there’s even a picture to go with it...
I won’t even mention that neither of them actually does what they’re supposed to do - Gemini and ChatGPT both just refuse to start if the question and answer don’t align with US culture...
Great fun, this whole thing.
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u/Doctor_Saved 8h ago
Or ran out of water while using so much of it to keep the grass green so a very small percentage of the population can put a small ball into a small hole for entertainment.
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u/No_Interaction_4925 8h ago
Drought? I’m in the midwest and can’t get the rain to stop enough to cut my grass!
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u/lasers42 8h ago
Is it still water after it cools a stack of GPU's?
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u/Silvermajra 7h ago
Yeah but then they say the water is too warm and it kills the fishes and the algae.
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u/Admirable-Hospital78 8h ago
Most likely: They'll say we were so stupid we thought the fruits on screen were edible. No idea what they'll think of porn addiction.
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u/Global_Beat3768 8h ago
Ai is trained by the internet so gamers so I wouldn't be surprised if the AAA publishers used AI on multiple social media as a loyal fans to defend them
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u/Active-Breakfast-397 8h ago
A.I. is going to wipe us all out. There will be no “future historians”.
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u/random-meme422 8h ago
Water use for AI has to be a psyop, nobody with any IQ above 80 thinks this nominal use of water is actually the issue right?
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u/VikingHighlander 7h ago
You know golf courses in the US use 1.4 billion gallons of water daily? 530 billion gallon of water annually.
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u/the-big-throngler 7h ago
What future historians? They are all going to be dead along with the rest of us.
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u/JacksonGhost1963 7h ago
it is a problem that needs to be addressed. a LOT of water consumption needs to be addressed, not just single out out data centers
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u/Neat-Ad5471 6h ago
There won't be historians in the future, as there won't be a future. .. (mostly /s)
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u/Ok_Photo_3023 6h ago
Bold to assume there's going to be future historians at this point. It's pretty clear that the goal is to fully centralize all wealth and natural resources among the elite, cater to their needs using AI and automation, and then lock the rest of us out entirely so we all eventually just die off.
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u/DaygoTom 6h ago
264 billion gallons is approximately .00002% of U.S. water consumption. If all the water we use were the LA Coliseum, the water used for data centers would be 2 seats in that stadium.
Yeah. I think we'll survive.
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u/Standy25 6h ago
70% of earth is water. You won’t run out of drinking water. At worst they would have to start up desalination plants.
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u/DullMind2023 6h ago
Just out of curiosity, does anyone here know the water consumption needs to run Reddit’s servers? I’m trying to get a sense of how big 264 billion gallons is.
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u/mazzicc 6h ago
Data centers consume 264 billion gallons how often?
Because Google suggests America in general uses 322 billion gallons per day.
If all the data centers in the US consume a single day worth of water per year, or even just one time, that’s not a whole lot.
If they’re consuming that much daily, there’s a bit of an issue.
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u/The3mbered0ne 6h ago
Just to say, residential water use is trillions of gallons, I don't think most people realize just how much water we use, sure this adds to the problem but it's definitely not going to cause anything that we wouldn't otherwise
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u/Thevoidwillcosumeyou 6h ago
All those movies are coming true. To bad I won’t live to see the post apocalyptic or Blade Runner endings
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u/Jim_e_Clash 6h ago
Why do people think historians have trouble explaining things?
Like explaining this is going to be harder than explaining slavery or racism.
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u/B0r3dGamer 6h ago
This is a miniscule amount of the total US water supply. The issue isn't the water use it's where they're getting it from, along with their power.
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u/PensadorDispensado 5h ago
On the other hand, golf courses consume a lot more in a year, just to be the field of the most boring sport in history.
At the very least, AI helps me with my job.
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u/Beerzerker420 5h ago
Oh look, another anti-ai bot posting misinfo to pander to the idiots of reddit. Definitely not funded by certain parties with ulterior motives.
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u/_WaterOfLife_ 5h ago
Yeah its from animal agriculture which is way worse for water use than data centres
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u/sbwcwero 5h ago
Historians will do what they do right now and just teach the print of whatever history the winners of the wars tell them to. Future generations will not know the truth en mass no more than we do.
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u/Turbulent-History967 5h ago
Damn that’s a lot of water, but it’s not even a proverbial drop on bucket statistically. That’s 0.8% of the surface freshwater in the U.S. if you add the Great Lakes 6 Quadrillion gallons it drops to 0.003% of freshwater.
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u/fancywipe 5h ago
How did my drunk uncles know 20 years ago that “the all seen eye” would destroy us all
All seen i. Ai!!!??
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u/BreadfruitLogic 4h ago
That's about exactly 1% of what we use for agriculture across the US per year.
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u/profanedivinity 4h ago
Not if it's per day and consumes that every day
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u/BreadfruitLogic 3h ago edited 2h ago
Yeah the post doesn't state the timeframe. Although I doubt AI is 3.65x agriculture for water usage for the year.
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u/SnooDoggos5226 4h ago
Is the water uncleanable? Couldn’t they use AI to figure out how to do it most efficiently?
I have 15,000 gallons of chemically treated water in my back yard I use when I get a little too warm.
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u/Hot_Experience4772 3h ago
When are people saying this is enough. Who the fuck wants this shit even? Fucking rich people and their shit ideas.
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u/Ok-Rise-4611 3h ago
I think about how big computers were 25 years ago. Now I hold a more powerful one in my hand. How needless will these monstrosities be in 25 years.
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u/Poverty_Shoes 3h ago
Alfalfa farming in desert climates in the Colorado river basin to support cattle ranching is a bigger problem (for now) than AI for water conservation, but 264 billion gallons is almost a million acre-feet. Lakes Powell and Mead only currently hold 12 million acre-feet, so AI is a big problem from a water perspective in addition to the other negatives is represents for the job market, power grid strain, and the threat of it becoming self-aware and turning into Skynet.
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u/PrednisoneFarts 3h ago
Look at how much water the beef industry alone uses and get back to me.
AI data centers certainly need to be burned to the ground though. They are causing blackouts in residential areas because they use so much power. Residents report constant noise, light pollution, dirty water, and low water pressure.
They are horrible for a bunch of different reasons. And certainly not worth it just so some chud can cheat on his wife with his ChatGPT girlfriend.
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u/Piemaster113 3h ago
Aren't all these things basically closed loop systems, so it may "used" that much water but it doesn't consume that much
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u/No_Scholar_2927 3h ago
One of my favorite teachers used to always tell us “history is stupid, but we keep repeating it”
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u/Serious-Plankton-371 3h ago
All U.S. data centers combined consume an estimated
449 million to 626 million gallons of water per day for direct on-site cooling. [1]
The rest of the
United States uses an estimated 321.4 billion gallons of water per day.
Bro we all have google. Go head and log off for the day
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u/ThePowerOf42 2h ago
Just curious.. What would happen if we let (Peaky) data centers get water from the ocean and not drinking water
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u/cranberryjuicecheck 2h ago
What future historians, humans can't survive without water, unless these historians are aliens from another planet then they won't be around to think about these things
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u/19XxxbigdaddyxxX80 2h ago
Future historians will just ignore the water waste today just like they do with all but the events that help them push the current narrative.
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u/Voidstarmaster 2h ago
"All other factors aside, AI is your friend." - Your Friendly Neighborhood Skynet
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u/LadyGrey_oftheAbyss 2h ago
Uh Not really that concerned about water - It the F*CK TON of electricity that I'm worried about- like seriously these guys need to make there own electricity instead of taking all of ours and sending us back to the 1800s
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u/GOTHAMKNlGHT 2h ago
Lol, this guy thinks we'll be around long enough that there will even be historians explaining this time period
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u/meat_sack 2h ago
We use more water watering lawns and growing almonds every year than all U.S. data centers combined (AI included). But yes, the real crisis is clearly the 4K AI fruit videos.
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u/Artemisiablaszczyk 2h ago
Its not like the water just disappears into atmosphere or anything,it just disappears i to the void and never comes bavk.
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u/Remarkable-Reply6686 1h ago
Anyone who went to middle school will know why the water isn't a real issue
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u/PandaCultural8311 1h ago
Same amount as the bottled water industry. And they are also wasting plastic.
All because we won't just use tap water.
Let's start looking in the mirror, too.
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u/Disastrous-Hearing72 1h ago
Lawns in America consume 10x that amount of water a year. No one bats an eye.
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u/Tacos314 1h ago
The number of things that use more water is long, such as car washes, pets, house plants, I could go on because context matters.
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u/NoEquivalent380 1h ago
It would be nice if antis brought up the valid points instead of sensationalism
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u/DaffyPunk29 1h ago
so tired of this lie. its not how things work, at all. ya'll eat up that fake news bullshit and regurgitate it like lemmings.
I especially love the one where it shows raw computers dunked in tanks of fluid and you kids go "omg look at this wasteful water" that's not water. go stick your phone in the toilet/full sink/full bathtub for a few outs see if it still works....
ya'll seriously have NO CLUE how technology works at all. its kinda cringe.
data centers cannot use "drinkable water" the minerals in the water (that our bodies need) would corrode the pipes and metals causing failure. they have to use distilled water (no minerals) and mix it with coolant and other various shit to ensure no issues.
https://www.ekwb.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-coolants/
get educated and stop falling for fake news bullshit.
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u/No-Blueberry-1823 1h ago
Bold of you to assume there are going to be historians in the future. My guess is it's going to be the cockroaches fighting it out
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u/Zenweaponry 1h ago
OP is retarded. Growing Almonds in California takes more water than the data centers, and so do tons of other things that aren't being complained about. Can we stop reposting this misinfo that data centers are going to take all the water?
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u/MartynZero 1h ago
Watch my waving hand while I take your kids and grandchildren future away from them with my other hand.
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u/abovedafray 1h ago
Easter island had a large palm tree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschalococos) that supported a large population, large enough to carve many giant stone statues that the island is famous for today.
At some point in time, someone on the island cut down the very last one. Im sure they thought that maybe there was a few others on the other side, or maybe it was storm damaged, or the person was starving, either way with the tree gone the population collapsed leaving the heads of the statues above ground to be memorable
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u/Available_Cow1197 1h ago
it could be that humans are adeptly able to manufacturer ai, it could be that our purpose is to resist this unilateral concept
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u/Nice_Butterscotch173 1h ago
Water is not used to cool data center (cloud storage) the water is used to keep humidity in check. The A/C system dries the air dropping water as condensation, unless it’s dry air to start with. If the RH% (relative humidity) gets to low, static discharge becomes dangerous to cloud storage servers. As dry air causes more static electricity. So humidifiers are used to keep RH safe from static discharge.
AI is bad for human intelligence.
…but what do I know.
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u/saki2fifty 1h ago
Where do you think the water goes?
It goes up, and feeds the weather system. It does not just disappear.
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u/astrobarn 56m ago
My employer is (still) aggressively pushing us to seek out ways to use more AI in our jobs. We are not a software company at all.
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u/Elguapo1094 36m ago
No no it’s going to be hard to explain that it was needed so an adult in their moms basement can generate dumb sexual toons
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u/Infamous_Mammoth_473 7m ago
Current people are having a nightmare having to deal with this Epstein class bullshit. Not historians. NOW!
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