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The AI cost of water isn’t really a big deal in comparison to the consumption of water through crops and other means worldwide.
I heard the cost of water for AI worldwide is 1/80 the water consumption of corn in America alone.
What is a big deal is the money invested towards it is holding up our economy, (when it could be spent on making society better) creating fake news and impersonating humans at a rapid rate.
IIRC it depends on how you count it, if you are counting water use for hydro power then it uses shitloads. But places that use hydro usually have plenty of water to do that in the first place and any other datacentre would be the same, AI isn’t special. Any kind of factory would also use a lot.
but AI is increasing the rate at whoch data centers are being built which is putting enormous strain on a lot of communities with aging or inadequate public infrastructure and utilities like water and electricity. Some people have seen water and/or electricity prices double or have even lost access to their public utilities because everything is being routed to a nearby datacenter thats younger than their kids. And in many instances politicians are ignoring the communities they’re displacing because theres significant money involved.
What drives me crazy about the use of water for datacenters is that it isn’t necessary. Unlike growing crops where the water is a non-negotiable requirement of the endeavor just by its very nature, you can cool a datacentre without continuously consuming water.
It just so happens that by a completely insane series of circumstances it’s the cheapest way to do so. You could run the servers in the datacenters at a lower power limit. You could use non-evaporative cooling. You could build the datacentre in a colder or less arid climate. But no, all of those options either cost slightly more or generate slightly less money, so they aren’t even considered. Couple that with the fact that a significant proportion of that consumption is in service of prompts that no end user ever actively asked for, like the LLMs responses being generated many thousands of times per second by Google searches. It’s just this utterly pointless pissing away of resources.
Well I think the perspective on water is that a lot of these data centers aren’t paying market price for water, and are leaving residents in the area with less water available
Thats a choice the local government is making and doesnt apply to every data center.
So? It’s still impactful to human lives and is more directly tangible than abstract food costs
But it isn’t an AI problem it’s a government problem.
So if a coal plant was consuming vast resources and interfering with the populace, is that the coal plants fault or the government?
If there’s a remote village somewhere that needs a steady supply of electricity and coal power is the only solution. Is that a bad thing because it’s coal?
If a coal plant was then built in a place where the water supply was scarce and they government was like sure you can build that here whatever and then they did and suddenly the towns people had to start importing water bottles to meet the demand. Is that a coal problem or a government problem?
Also, the machine costs $500B/year to operate and generates less than $2B in gross revenue. So John Shareholder is going to need a multi-trillion dollar bailout in a year or two.
They are hoping to become profitable “soon”.
I love big tech’s products after the startup funding designed to kill competition has been spent. It’s really the sweet spot where the product doesn’t function efficiently anymore AND it costs more than the original product or service it replaced AND any human workers involved are not protected as employees.
I think most people would be happy if you took away their fake money (stonks) and replaced it with everything they needed to be happy
Actually could not agree more
Now I just noticed how far fucking down those pants are.
Profits over everything else is the goal of capitalism.
It’s not even profitable though… At this point it seems it is just about control, like they would rather have a money pit then let independent workers, ie creatives, have any profit.
But capitalists think it can let them eliminate jobs so we have to go all in no matter what
Time magazine: let’s make em person of the year!
Person of the Year is not an endorsement of their practices, it’s really just whoever dominated the news cycle that year. Both Hitler and Stalin have been Person of the Year. Sometimes it’s not even people, like “The Computer” in 1982.
Did you read the article? If its not endorsement its at least pandering.
ChatGPT is a child molester
i dont hate ai it but should be limited AND MODERATED. WDYM İ CAN MANİPULATE A BOT AND ASK FOR A BOMB RECİPE FOR A “fiction”
Valencia AI has you covered.
it’s more of a tool that can read all the books at once, but it also doesn’t know how to judge its contents, so the user will still need to judge what it said themselves and not blindly trust it. (You can also find books about making the same bombs)
I think ai can be useful and beneficial to the world if used correctly. This is not possible within the capitalist system however.
Yeah, I think objectively the “A.I.'s” are kind of neat, like those old desktop pal cats kinda of neat, cost almost nothing to run. But A.I. costs such an extreme ammount of resources to run enitre cities could be run in its deficits alone. We do not have the energy, water, or computers to run it, but something is bankrolling it.
You know, if you don’t massively and stupidly exaggerate, it’s not evil!
I mean already is given the estimates we have for power and water use, not to mention the way it is being used it is blatantly “evil” yes.
Let’s assume:
- we live in a world with 100% clean energy
- AI produces no pollution
- AI puts no stress on any of the electricity grids it’s plugged into
It’s still a plagiarism machine that is atrophying important cognitive skills in a big chunk of its users
You can train it on data you own instead of plagiarising.
I wonder why every major AI company has chosen in tandem to not do that then 🤔
