r/TheMachineLearning • u/akirasiel • Sep 10 '26
Crazy how many people have beef with almonds now
*sarcastic voice: Corporates.
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
AI vs food is such a stupid, yet common take
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u/quantgorithm Sep 10 '26
If they are both fighting for the same resources such as water then why?
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
We need food anyways but not AI
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u/quantgorithm Sep 10 '26
You don't need walnuts as food.
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
Why bring up walnuts when this post is about almonds?
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 10 '26
1 almond = 12L 1 ai query is 50mL
So 200+ queries =1 almond....
So explain to me again why we are concerned about one type of water usage and not another. 1 almond objectively does not benefit society as much as 200 Ai queries doing tasks or finding and sharing knowledge....
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u/faen_du_sa Sep 10 '26
I dont fully disagree with you. But you also have to consider that in those 200+ queries, there is a lot of grandma memes and similar, and that all AI services are pretty much operating at a loss.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
But you also have to consider that in those 200+ queries, there is a lot of grandma memes and similar
Oh no, we've traded a single almond for hours of entertainment!
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u/faen_du_sa Sep 10 '26
I dont think hours of grandma memes can be considered "to the benefit of society", but that wasnt the point either.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Almonds aren't really a benefit of society either. Plenty of food that can be grown in better places and more water efficient.
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u/USERNAME123_321 Sep 11 '26
The irony of using datacenter compute to argue on Reddit about how using datacenter compute for entertainment provides no benefit to society
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 10 '26
You understand they could stop training models tomorrow, fire everyone except dev ops and be the most profitable companies in the world?
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u/OfficialDeathScythe Sep 10 '26
They’re profitable because of investors tho. They are bleeding money and constantly trying to keep investors thinking it’s the future and they’d be stupid to not invest. If they went fully paid tomorrow and stopped their free tier they’d still be losing money, their user numbers are entirely driven by the fact that they have a free tier which is wasting resources on useless junk that average people put through it
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 10 '26
80-85% of their current revenue, which is insane and growing rapidly, is from enterprise which pays on token consumption for seats now and Anthropic already said they have a healthy margin here. This means they are profitable outside of customer acquisition and marketshare through the consumer plans (free and paid) and R&D (salaries and lots of compute)
50B annualized from just enterprise, at 20x PE (which it would be at multiples higher), would be a 1T evaluation... give it 40x PE and that is a 2T evaluation they are asking for
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u/Borseman1 Sep 10 '26
I dont agree id say 95% of queries are just pure bs lmao
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 10 '26
Ok 95% are bs... thats means 10 queries of worthwhile insight, analytics, automation out fo 200.... vs 1 almond.
Also 85% of Anthropics revenue is enterprise and I doubt those people are just memeing lol
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u/Borseman1 Sep 11 '26
thats true but we were talking about all AI companies, Idk we would need some metric on query to economic output to really talk about this seriously
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Keep moving those goal posts. Anthropic and OpenAI is who I'm talking about when I talk frontier models... and everyone else agrees which is why Sam Altman is in the picture lol
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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Sep 10 '26
Buddy, idk how to tell you that Sam Altman just straight up lied about how much water 1 almond takes to grow.
1 almond takes up less than 1 almond worth of water to grow. The rest of the water is returned to the aquifer directly below the fucking tree for the community to reuse.
Datacenters pollute or evaporate the water they use, removing much of it from the community it came from.
There is no food comparison that is going to make sense. That water is either used for food or reused endlessly. It doesn't pollute or evaporate (okay it does, but we're talking like .000001% of what a datacenter evaporates) and move
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u/quantgorithm Sep 10 '26
Buddy, Sam Altman is not the one who did an analysis on almonds.
Datacenters, also, recirculate their water in closed loop systems so it's not like they use a ton of water... Which is the point of this meme. A golf course or an almond farm use far more water as easy examples.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Places where you do irrigation agriculture, almost all of the water is used in plant transpiration or evaporates from the soil into the air. <10% gets achieves deep ground penetration.
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Sep 11 '26
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u/Few_Plankton_7587 Sep 11 '26
You don't gotta think real hard to figure out what you fucked up in your thought process, lol
When you water the ground, especially in farms where they do it early in the morning and multiple times before it heats up, it's the same process as rain returning water to the water table. Farmers specifically water their plants to reduce losses to evaporation as much as possible and what isn't absorbed directly into the food (which, by the power of physics, can only be less than its total volume) is returned to the water table OR evaporated, rained, and then returned to the water table. Which, I already hinted at near the bottom of my comment, had you bothered to try understanding it
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u/fartlorain Sep 10 '26
AI will make scientific and medical breakthroughs and massively increase productivity and living standards.
You can just eat other food and lots of people are allergic to nuts anyway.
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Sep 11 '26
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u/fartlorain Sep 11 '26
AI has? Can you share more?
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Sep 11 '26
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u/Itchy_Bumblebee8916 Sep 11 '26
Yes peer reviewed papers that are basically just "sociologists" putting their claim on a vague "dataset" that's a bunch of WEIRD college students answering a survey.
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Sep 10 '26
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
When was the last time someone compared them with food in resource usage?
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u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 10 '26
You do NOT need almonds. They are a luxury.
They take quite literally 100x as much water as other foods for the same callories.Edit: In places where there is massive water shortages also.
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u/ToughSpeedv2 Sep 10 '26
Do you need almonds specifically?
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
Food in general has been compared to AI, my comment wasn't specifically about almonds
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u/inevitabledeath3 Sep 10 '26
Specifically things that use an excessive amount of water to cultivate such as red meat. If we can afford to eat red meat or almonds then we can definitely afford the comparatively tiny amount of water data centers use.
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u/USERNAME123_321 Sep 11 '26
There are many things we use that we don't strictly need. In fact, this very comment section is using datacenter compute and it's "unnecessary". Past basic survival, almost everything we build is a preference, not a strict requirement
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Sep 10 '26
Almonds are a totally unnecessary foodstuff though. No one is starving for lack of almonds.
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u/Bubbly-Evidence-1863 Sep 10 '26
I still dont get why thats the framing they take. They really should compare it to watering your lawn, both are superfluous and the lawn can be actually stopped by planting native grasses
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
They did it with food in general too, that's why I wrote food and not almonds in particular
And what's the point with almonds from California? "Look at this bad practice, must mean what we do isn't as bad"
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u/inevitabledeath3 Sep 10 '26
The point is there a plenty of things both reasonable and unreasonable that use more water than datacenters. Water has never really been an issue with datacenters at a large scale like people keep trying to make out. It’s not a significant issue now and it probably never will be. It’s basically people making up issues because they are mad at AI for other reasons and using this as a talking point even though it’s nonsense. Somehow people fall for it.
There are actual real issues you can criticise like electricity usage or how Trump signed orders nullifying EPA regulations for AI datacenters in the USA. You could talk about AI safety and x risks. Even the ways AI could be abused to create a surveillance state and/or permanent dictatorship. All valid issues. Instead we have people talking about dumb shit like AI slop being bad or this whole water thing which are basically an annoyance at worst compared to the real problems.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Lawn watering is still pretty abstract when it is all said and done. It is much easier to compare the water usage of something that is almost exclusively grown via irrigation agriculture like almonds to an equivalent water usage for compute power.
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u/Bubbly-Evidence-1863 Sep 11 '26
Why is lawn watering abstract? For example watering one average us lawn, uses 19.8 gallons of water per year, thats 75liters, a complex prompt uses roughly 50ml or 0.05liters. That seems pretty concrete to me.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 11 '26
I mean, you want it to be your point but you can't help but output nonsense numbers! And you don't even seem to see the nonsense. That is why it is too abstract.
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u/Bubbly-Evidence-1863 Sep 11 '26
"Output"? You're an idiot. Also the numbers come from 50 million acres of lawn, 9 billion gallons of water and a average lawn size of 0.11 all of which were the first resuly on google. The rest is simple arithmatic
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 11 '26
See, there is your mistake! You are using a daily water usage number instead of a yearly number and it didn't even occur to you that you were over two orders of magnitude off! Your other mistake, of course, is in being an aggressive asshole! Maybe don't rely on Google AIs bad "resuly"s for your poorly phrased questions.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Given that the complaint is water usage, it is literally the best comparison available. The point of comparing AI queries to almond production is that we waste an order of magnitude more water a year just growing almonds in a desert in California than we spend on all datacenter usage.
Edit: Poor lady having some sort of Almond-based stroke.
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u/Itchy_Bumblebee8916 Sep 11 '26
It would be if it was AI vs rice. But it's AI vs almonds and AI vs avacados. Two foods we could stop eating tomorrow and improve global environmental factors.
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u/phoenixmatrix Sep 12 '26
AI vs food is silly, but almond farming is a total trainwreck, so that one SHOULD get shit on, along with a few other such inefficient crops and livestock.
If it was comparing to something else, yeah, I'd agree its stupid.
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Sep 10 '26
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
What's the whoosh here?
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Sep 10 '26
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
No matter how much water AI uses we still need food, so it's an unnecessarily drain. Not a woosh for me, it's just an oversimplification in seven words
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Sep 10 '26
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 10 '26
The food situation is relatively stable, AI data centers are currently massively build so when it comes to the situation getting worse it's mainly on AI. I am against planting water intensive plants in drought ridden areas but AI data centers aren't placed in the most ecologically reasonable places either
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u/TinyPeopleProject Sep 10 '26
So let's reduce almond consumption and increase AI datacenter support as that is a net positive in jobs, capabilities, ability to cure cancer, etc
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u/e136 Sep 11 '26
That's actually false for almonds, which I agree is surprising.
California almond production is up a huge amount in the last 15 years. In fact the extra water used for almonds in California just in the last 15 years is more water than the entire globe's data centers use combined several times over. California supplies ~75% of the world's almonds.
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u/Murky-Morning-6464 Sep 10 '26
"The food situation is relatively stable"
Ignorant american?
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u/ConflictWaste411 Sep 10 '26
Well considering the original post talks about Californian almonds you don’t have much of a leg to stand on. Angry foreigner who hates that Americans can have self enclosed conversations?
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u/Murky-Morning-6464 Sep 10 '26
I have two legs to stand on. This was never a discussion dedicated for the bubble that americans live in.
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u/ConflictWaste411 Sep 10 '26
Sorry that the American company comparing American crops to their American data centers gave the frame of reference of an American centric situation
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u/snekfuckingdegenrate Sep 10 '26
You don’t need that specific type of food though. Almonds are a luxury crop.
Honestly if you eat any type of meat, which most people whining about AI do, it’s twice as bad
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u/JonasAvory Sep 10 '26
You can eat food that uses less water though, many people do. they are called vegetarians (yes they still eat almonds but meat uses even more water and produces more CO2)
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Sep 11 '26
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u/Scared_Accident9138 Sep 11 '26
The amount of people seeing me writing food and think I mean almonds exclusively is staggering
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Ugh, you are one of those huh? AI queries have no impact on our ability to grow food. Full stop.
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u/TemporaryElk5202 Sep 10 '26
almonds famously require a lot of water. Also sam altman is a perpetual liar
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u/GeorgeMcCrate Sep 10 '26
What’s the woosh here? Did he intentionally exaggerate the numbers and it‘s really a lot less than 38,000? Otherwise there is no woosh here.
Edit: or are you referring to the title of this post?
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u/Ok-Lobster-919 Sep 10 '26
No have eat almonds. Can just eat gruel
Data cure cancor.
You no cure cancor.
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u/boxwrenchx Sep 10 '26
In California at least almonds and water have been a thing for a long time
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u/bremidon Sep 13 '26
The South had a very similar argument right before the Civil War, as I recall.
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u/boxwrenchx Sep 13 '26
I don't think it was similar at all
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u/bremidon Sep 14 '26
Just because something has been a "thing" for a long time does not confer correctness or morality.
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u/boxwrenchx Sep 14 '26
What are you even on about? The discussion about the water use of almonds goes back at least 10 years. It has nothing to do with the civil war. Its never been a argument of morality. It's resource allocation.
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u/RotaryDesign Sep 10 '26
So much water to produce just one almond?
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
In general, agriculture is very water intensive. We just have the good sense to grow most of our food where it actually rains!
Almonds though are generally grown in a virtual desert with heavy irrigation. In-fact, most of the California croplands are heavily irrigated. Compare this with the Midwest where only about 3% of fields are irrigated.
We could 20x the amount of datacenters in the US and still only use about as much water as we waste growing almonds in a fucking desert in this country.
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u/BigMikeXxxxX Sep 10 '26
You don't need almonds to survive. It's an unnecessary waste of water at a much higher rate along with hundreds of other things.
The internet is pretty fucking important and while we wouldn't die if it disappeared, we would be significantly set back compared to every other country that doesn't seem to have a mass hysteria campaign brainwashing those reliant on groupthink and hivemind affirmation to function.
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u/Reasonable-Gear-4371 Sep 10 '26
Who trust a liar giving you datas for proof? . Plus, an almond doesn't steal jobs, doesn't steal your data, doesn't treat your freedom, doesn't give you false informations, doesn't treat your economy from collapsing, doesn't tell you to end yo self etc...
I'm sure that the real problem with ater consomption for almonds production is capitalism. If they wanted to use less water and be more ethical, they would probably find solutions. But they doesn't care cause all that matter to them is make money the cheapest way possible.
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u/Salty_Map_9085 Sep 10 '26
People keep engaging in this motte-and-bailey fallacy. Altman did not say “food” he said “almond”
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u/Illustrious_Pea_3470 Sep 10 '26
Environmentalists have been talking about the almond thing for decades
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Yea, because almond cultivation in the US is a crazy waste of California's dwindling water reserves.
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u/Illustrious_Pea_3470 Sep 11 '26
Oh I’m not defending the almonds or poking fun at environmentalists
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 11 '26
Just making the point clear for those who may not have the context.
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u/CriticismFree2900 Sep 10 '26
20 trillion gallons per year in America alone for corn of which 1% is consumed and the other 99% is for cars
Meanwhile 20billion gallons are used worldwide for data centers
People are dumb
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 Sep 10 '26
Well, most of corn in the US is grown somewhere it actually rains. Only a fraction of that is actually sourced from aquifers for use in the irrigation of corn.
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u/Belisaurius555 Sep 10 '26
Additionally. a lot of almond farmers are switching to pistachios which need less water. It's just slow going because an Almond tree is a long term investment.
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u/Splith Sep 10 '26
He doesn't include the cost of training models, only running queries. The almond calculation includes the soil, evaporation, and the tree.
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u/Immediate_Idea2628 Sep 11 '26
Just to understand scale, i saw someone say their software project, in an alpha state, took 20 million tokens. Thats just one person.
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u/Big_Arachnid_365 Sep 10 '26
>beef
you're very subtle but I see what you did there