This is also happening for water. They could use closed cooling systems, but water is so cheap for them it's considered a waste of money to not use evaporative cooling .

Fitting image, because clean water for cooling will become an issue sooner.

Which means of course instead of charging the data centers for more since they're using it proportionately more, they charge everybody individually the same per diem rate. Honestly if you use more you should have to pay proportionately more. Oh you use 80% more than the average? You pay 80% more than the average. Sigh. Like the rich people would ever allow that to happen.

I've never seen this meme used in its un-reversed nonironic way.

These data centers are a failure on the part of local and state governments. Of course you expect companies to take advantage, that's what representative government is supposed to protect us from.

this might be the first time i see this image being used as it was intended

Despite my city having hydroelectric power as one of the power supplies, data centers make me horrified of what damage they'd do if they started popping up in my hometown. Especially with all the water they waste.

Ideas?

• CO2 tax - if it'd be high enough to completely pay for the damage, this shit would stop pretty fast. But even less than that would help. Alternative: Certificates without loopholes. Some use would survive, e. g. an IT professional would still use $ 50 worth of energy per day if it gives a 10 % productivity boost, but models would start consolidating and use all tricks to keep it efficient, rather than push out whatever they can. Only works when imports from regions that refuse to participate are taxed when imported, or outright banned.
• Huge advantage of machine learning: The "when" is completely flexible. Could just use excess power from renewable peaks, or even nuclear & coal nightly production. But as long as it's cheap enough to just make more power around the clock: Why should they? They won't do it voluntarily. Solutions could start with a "green" label for consumers, but that would probably not do that much. It also won't help when we force them to use 100 % renewables and nuclear, and then they just buy all solar panels and wind turbines off the market leaving us with higher costs and trouble switching to net 0
• Evaluate the market and identify the bubble. Does an AI focussed company make conservative use of existing capabilities, without overhyping them, or put their money on likely near-future developments, or depend entirely on optimistic future capabilities?
• With such measures in place, we'd still have the models they trained so far. They'd eventually plateau anyway (or already have). When training of new models stops, as we make it too expensive to spend a lot of power for a tiny improvement, a good part of the power waste stops.

sure lemme just put solar panels on my apartment real quick

Increased energy production doesn't lead to more water being available though