"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
grok is using delicious clean drinking water from the memphis sands aquifer for cooling. elon promised to build a water treatment plant in order to stop using drinking water but, and you’ll never believe this, he didn’t.
fuck elon.
please do not use grok.
he did the same in germany. When questioned about the water usage of his tesla factory he gaslighted every1 by saying look here's water everywhere. Turns out, you can only extract so much water from the ecosystem and the inhabitants now have their water rationed. He doesnt give a flying fuck about other people.
He doesn't even care about his own children. Disowned one and used the toddler as a human shield.
"This is my son Kevlar."
When are governments gonna step in and shut that shit down? I understand the corruption in the US will always put profits over people, but why are European countries letting american companies do this shit?
There's nothing hard to explain for historians of the future: it was the second gilded age that saw the buildup of the techno-fascist infrastructure by greedy billionaires - sorry, trillionaires - in cahoots with the government. Now get back in line to get counted citizen...
When the capitalist class heard "it's Socialism or Barbarism" they responded "what about extinction?"
Can't do violence against them, though!
I think it's pretty easy. We let the rich rule our world, and the rich demanded this, and so a lot of people just let it happen through bribes.
It's even easier to explain when it becomes public how much of this infrastructure use is consumerism vs most-probably government analysis.
Reminds me of how Britain starved India cause it forced them to grow tea instead of food for themselves.
Sounds about white.
The worst part is all that drinking water is being wasted semi-permanently. Most of it then goes to the sea and becomes saltwater. Even if the US heavily invested into desalination plants right now - it'd take decades to potentially retrieve most of that.
All that for... another economic crisis?
Also, they aren't even recycling it through the plants. Like cooling and recirculating? Even just passive cooling?
Kill them all. Kill everyone who ordered or designed or bought space at these facilities.
Its not prevention. The damage has been done, human lives are going to be lost, but there's time for revenge still.
Per day? Per year? Per second?
Sounds like a lot of water, but you can't just give an amount of water when you're talking about the rate of something.
Yeah and the USA uses 322 billion gallons a day, so this number, which is about a day’s worth, really changes its meaning depending on the timescale.
No time frame was given, so we can only assume it’s for the lifetime of the entire universe.
Meanwhile we have commercials on the radio "debunking" the myth that data centers waste a ton of water. We're brainwashing the people, which is becoming easier as our braincells waste away using LLMs.
One report estimated that U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021).
That estimate was from 2021.
Now it's at least around 600 million gallons of water per day.
Corporate capture of our government has destroyed our country, and will soon destroy our entire way of life. If we stop all harmful emissions today, the planet will still warm for another 20-30 years before it starts going back down. 30 more years of hotter summers, shortened winters, extended hurricane seasons, extended and worse droughts/wildfires...
The people that approved these data centers should be charged with crimes against humanity.
We need to make evaporation cooling illegal. They can make a closed loop system like Nvidia uses but they won't, because it's more expensive. We need the law to force them to.
What do you mean by "evaporation cooling"? A fraction of the water evaporates to provide cooling, a fraction is discharged as purge to prevent solute accumulation, and the rest is recycled? I thought the main reason that datacenters consume as much water as they do is when they don't recycle the water, and just use it once and then discharge it (no evaporation at all).
Maybe I'm misinformed but I am close to someone that designs them. He said evaporation cooling is cheaper, closed loop systems are more expensive.
Future? Historians?
You are funny.
Related Digital’s development of a $16 billion data center in Saline Township, Michigan is moving forward after they sued the local government in response to the locals voting AGAINST the construction. They’re just going to ignore the people’s vote
Same thing is happening in TN right now where a company is trying to build a small data center next to a zoo. The city held public hearings about it, but basically told people it was already a done deal. The company threatened to sue to city if it didn’t pass.
These things are a blight on our society. It’s a race to the bottom with profits coming before everything else.
No mystery. The entire point of capitalism is to please the disgustingly privileged at the expense of everybody else. Literally everything is like this. "AI" is just the latest version. See also cars.
The likely irony that these data centres will be used in the pipeline of creating a commercial for bottled water.
The drought statistic is true but the water consumption one is batshit insane lmao. It all comes form a press firm called Mordor Intelligence which hasn't meaningfully backed up that claim.
AI datacenters are likely to not even breach 100 billion gallons BY 2028. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water)
Obviously that's still a lot of water, but 264 billion gallons right now is an absurd claim.
New rule: no water cooling in DCs. Air cooling and air con.
That and some hard rules on power usage would go a long way. If the US ever updates its infrastructure, and especially for power, that should open up new, safe options that don't kill or poison people.
For the mean time, though, let's stop the insanity.
That's quite literally impossible. The power consumption has gotten so bad that they need to water cool the AC condensers as far as I know.
Oh and the fun fact is that they could just use closed loop water cooling instead of evaporating all that water away... But many don't because that uses more power and power is more expensive than water.
Not to mention the fact that AI companies aren't even profitable
False! Tge fruit videos are the side project! The real project is undressing minors and generating them doing CP! If you don't believe me, just ask grok!
They'd need to be dead inside to not grok it
Always pisses me off that companies flagrantly use literary references like “grok” for the most absolutely evil shit
He thinks he’s cool for knowing the term, that’s why he used it. The man also thought “X” was a cool name…
How about you link a real source instead of some rando.