This but just the Microsoft logo lol
Imagine not being able to shower, because AI slop generator machines need that water!
Submitted 13 hours ago by ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1602a8f3-ab4f-4d7c-8727-b24409cf3e6c.jpeg
Comments
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
“Since Microsoft dropped its DEI initiatives, it’s good actually!”
sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Stoopid Texans. You’ve got the guns, start using the things. If they need cooling, maybe aerate a few blocks of servers for them.
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 2 hours ago
You should complain whenever million gallons of water are wasted by corporations seeking profits or by governments for their shady operations. Not just when it’s about AI.
UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
So not only are Corporations… People
Now they are more important people than regular citizens?
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Under capitalism they always were. Just take a close look at exactly who the “Founding Fathers” were.
xia@lemmy.sdf.org 4 hours ago
I don’t understand why AI data centers would CONSUME water. Once they fill up their chiller loops, then… that’s it, right?
It’s hard for me to imagine them relying on the temperature of the incoming water, and dumping all the warm water as discharge.
Forfaden@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
From what I’ve seen it’s “not worth the effort or expense” to reuse the water. Some of them literally just send tap water through the cooling loops and then into the sewer drains
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
They’re probably using cooling towers, which cool through evaporation. They should be using reclaimed though.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 minutes ago
This is the right answer. They use evaporative cooling. Which does save a lot of power so they can claim to be “green”.
SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de 2 hours ago
As long as it is cheaper to buy water, then evaporate it, big firms will continue to do so.
With a COP of around 15 and up it is difficult to argue with the economy of this.
Local regulation would be required, but that would need politicians who don’t suck.
waspentalive@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I worked 10 years at a data center, all that water is recycled - it is very carefully chemically balanced so as to not corrode the pipes and pumps, no they do not use it once and dump it out.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 1 hour ago
Because the massive stacks of high-powered chips that they use, tend to get very hot. They don’t use the kind of computers that work through passive cooling.
I say, as my Laptop burns into my lap.
turdburglar@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
elon is currrently. using the aquifer drinking water under memphis to cool grok. he’s also powering it with generators and smogging out the city.
please do not use grok.
ignotum@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I don’t care, nothing will come inbetween me and my boi, mecha hitler!
/j if that wasn’t obvious
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
mecha hitler!
So someone fed it Cards Against Humanity, huh?
excral@feddit.org 5 hours ago
The priorities are completly screwd up. If they found a way to power the AI datacenters with humans, Matrix style, would they ask Texans to sacrifice their first borns to do so?
derry@midwest.social 4 hours ago
Narrator voice: in fact that is what they did
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Google “Roko’s Basilisk”!
SpeedRunner@europe.pub 12 hours ago
Actually yes. They did vote for this.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
If a salesman misrepresents his product in any way of form, he gets called a swindler, faces potential legal consequences, and the people who bought his product are called “victims”.
If a politician does this, it’s just “business as usual”, and his voters were supposed to do enough research to make the correct choice.
braydan@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Project 2025 was pretty fucking clear. Y’all picked and continue to pick the red team 🎉
Zacryon@feddit.org 8 hours ago
It’s always a good idea to put computer centers in areas with water scarcity. /s
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
In hot areas with water scarcity.
ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 5 hours ago
And an electrical grid held together by duct tape and chewing gum
Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Well, yeah. If you put it somewhere cold like the Arctic it’ll melt the ice caps and make global warming worse. Better to let the cold places stay cold and put the hot data centres somewhere that’s already hot! Sorted - no more global warming (just some localised warming I guess)
“I’ll just put this over here with the rest of the fire” image from The IT Crowd
Patches@ttrpg.network 7 hours ago
I mean from Microsoft’s perspective it is working out…
Until someone goes all eco terrorism.
Laser@feddit.org 10 hours ago
People should be angry and upset about this. Similar to the story some weeks ago where residents of a small Texan town (seemingly rightfully at first) complained about the noise pollution of a Bitcoin mining farm. Turns out they all voted Republican. It’s always “we’ll deregulate and bring business” just that the modern businesses they bring are a net negative for the area except for the politicians and the companies. Is almost like these regulations were there for a reason.
Both Bitcoin and AI are stupid VC money that only matters in a very small bubble, and they’re not business in a traditional sense. They just leech resources at their compute centers to make the people who own them and live far away rich. I pity all this who didn’t vote for this kind of bullshit. The rest, enjoy your shorter showers and everything else! But remember, it’s the Dems who want to dictate stuff like water usage. Not in my free country! Oh, the water is gone because a greedy Corp stole it? That’s fine, one day it’s my turn to be rich.
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 1 hour ago
If you care about the environment and are upset about corporations and their datacenters your best voting option is neither the red or blue party.
Laser@feddit.org 1 hour ago
It doesn’t matter if you voted Republican. These problems are a direct consequence of Republican policies that they announced before the elections. Fearmongering about “any party left of us will take away your freedoms to limit your resource consumption” is a trait of far-right parties. My point was not about Democrats. It was about people who vote Republican.
The US has a political problem with its voting system that benefits two parties, and they won’t get rid of it. As long as this is the case, no other party matters. Also, Dems usually enact more regulations for the environment; see also California.
I voted neither Reps or Dems because I live in the EU, and my vote always went to Greens or other environmental parties.
bigfondue@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You could consider them an extractive industry like mineral mining. In this case the electricity and water are turned into profit. It creates some local jobs like construction, but the system administrators are likely hired from elsewhere. The R&D is likely being done elsewhere as well. Most of the money these businesses spend goes straight to Nvidia and the profit goes straight to a small group of executives and investors.
Laser@feddit.org 8 hours ago
At least mining did create some local jobs, though I do think that the area itself loses out because it’s a finite resource and the environmental impact is always there. And as you said, these modern examples don’t really require a big local workforce. It doesn’t stimulate the local economy a bit.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 2 hours ago
Stinky teens need shirts that point the blame at Microsoft. Get ripe and hang out with old people.
Almacca@aussie.zone 11 hours ago
If AI centres need so much cooling, why are they building them in Texas in the first place?
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Lack of regulations of all kinds
Almacca@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
On a suspicion, I had a quick look, and of course there’s also tax incentives, apparently.
Love this quote “Texas had long been a preferred location for large data centers given its central location, economic climate, reliable electric grid, historically low occurrences of natural disasters, educated workforce and pro-business environment.” :|
Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
Solar power?
Almacca@aussie.zone 7 hours ago
Apparently only partially, but mostly a natural gas plant to even further wreck the planet.
There’s hundreds of billions of dollars available to pour into this, and for what benefit to the nation? Meanwhile, the rest of the country’s infrastructure is crumbling.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Can’t they just use seawater or use air cooling?
MNByChoice@midwest.social 2 hours ago
A lot of the need is due to the heat density of the GPUs used for GenAI. Could they build less densely? Yes, and they likely already are but need to go further. I have seen data centers with racks less than half (I think it was closer to one quarter) populated for energy density issues.
Could they use sea water? Sea water causes more corrosion. (I am uncertain if this data center is close to the ocean.)
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Can’t they just make sub 75w GPUs that require basic cooling?
SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Talk about dystopian headlines
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
A boring one
rumba@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
WTF don’t they just use a closed geothermal loop?
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 3 hours ago
Im actually curious on how much energy can be reused from heat alone.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Move the operation to someplace cold, start up a little town around it and provide heat as a utility.
qyron@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
How much time before someone figures these infrastructures make very good targets for vandalism? I risk I will see datacenters destroyed by mobs and other actors before I die.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
It’s not vandalism, it’s direct action. Or sabotage, if you consider this to be a time of war (which it undoubtedly is — a class war). Don’t use the enemy’s language against ourselves.
turdburglar@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
please start with grok.
qyron@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
Allow me to use whatever words I want.
On this specific example, I’ll even call it constructive vandalism. It will pass on a very loud message.
AA5B@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
In theory we have elected representatives looking out for their constituents. Surely they would limit water use so this wouldn’t happen, and prevent the datacenters from relying on generators while waiting for power hookup, right? Oh, a red state. Never mind
qyron@sopuli.xyz 47 minutes ago
In my country, I know of two cases of datacenters that use waste water. And another is supposed to run on salt water, in the future. Those cases don’t trouble me.
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 1 hour ago
Some time ago i passed near a famous e-commerce warehouse and the place was surrounded by a 4 meter tall fence and a moat.
qyron@sopuli.xyz 49 minutes ago
Man the trebuchets!
nullroot@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Could someone explain to me how these data centers use up water? Like it’s it evaporating? What happens to the water? I get the water consumption is very high but is the problem we’re removing it from places that don’t refill or does into the environment mean it’s not wastewater? Please someone help me understand.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 minutes ago
They use evaporative cooling in the name of being “green”. Saves a lot of energy, but at the cost of water use.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Generating power with coal/nuclear/hydro uses water, and since the LLM data centers use power that would otherwise not have been generated, this is one of the ways that they use up water.
For cooling many (most?) data centers use evaporative cooling. That evaporated water could be captured again with a heat pump (reducing the wasted water + recuperating heat for other uses), but it’s Texas, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the data centers have no intensive to be less wasteful.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Generating power with coal/nuclear/hydro uses water, and since the LLM data centers use power that would otherwise not have been generated, this is one of the ways that they use up water.
I doubt those are constantly consuming large amounts of water. hydro just lets it through, and nuclear has chained closed loop systems, and they also let through some after the last loop
null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 3 hours ago
So assuming the datacenter uses the water for cooling, what happens to the water? Does it just get released as steam?
excral@feddit.org 22 minutes ago
Of course it would be possible to capture and condensate the steam but that equipment would cost money. If just using more water is cheap and unregulated there is no incentive not to do just so.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It often just evaporates, since they’re using evaporative cooling.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 7 hours ago
Actual interesting question:
How much energy and resources would we save by simply slowing down AI response time? A lot of the time you get an instant response from an LLM, and sure, it looks impressive, but most of the time you don’t need it that urgently.
Lulzagna@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
The majority of energy consumed is for training the AI models, not providing output from those models.
This means the water consumption is not tied to usage and prompts. Also it means resource consumption to train models is temporary, relative to the model.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Oh ok. So they’ll put the water back once the models are trained?
nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 7 hours ago
Another interesting question:
How much energy and resources would we save by simply slowing down Ai usage? A lot of the time people make unnecessary prompts or receive unhelpful generated text, and sure, it looks impressive, but most of the time you don’t need it at all.
grue@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
At scale? None. If we assume that (a) the number of queries are constant (i.e. that the slow response doesn’t drive away users) and (b) that the efficiency is the same whether it’s fast or slow, then having computers that take longer to calculate each response just means you need to have more of them working in parallel to service the demand.
Now, for a home user running AI locally, you could maybe save some energy by using more efficient silicon since you only need it to process one query at a time (assuming lower-spec parts actually are more efficient, which may or may not be the case), but that’s not really what we’re talking about here.
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I disagree. I think the biggest consumers of AI currently use it for work, and depending on the type of work I think very fast ai == more customers.
Goun@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
@grok this true?
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
incomprehensible text about being mechahitler
unconsequential@slrpnk.net 10 hours ago
Why aren’t they building these things underground or repurposing old mines in areas where geothermal is plentiful for power and aquifers are stable, instead of in water-poor, temperature extreme places like Texas and KY? …Oh right, poverty and red voters. Better to exploit and damage then have some upfront cost and long-term stability. I forget.
s@piefed.world 12 hours ago
Don’t feed the people but we feed the machines
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
No wonder the government don’t want anymore report on climate change.
ansiz@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I don’t get the news about these data centers guzzling water, where is the water going? If it’s for cooling, but that doesn’t destroy the water…
sexy_peach@feddit.org 11 hours ago
It’s hilarious that so many people see Americans as free people
JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
My country is int he middle of a data center boom, fuelled by the usual royal and political, uh, inputs. We also have seasonal droughts, which often result in water rationing and angry people upset at the mismanagement of our resources. Wonder which will give way first.
Snowclone@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Is cooling water not reusable? Shouldn’t these be closed systems?
DivineDev@piefed.social 4 hours ago
So genuine question, how is a datacenter needing water equivalent to showering? When people shower, the water gets dirty and needs to be cleaned. When water is used to cool servers, it gets warm but that should not be a problem, it doesn't need to go through a water treatment facility afterwards (?)
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Why can’t they use the shit and piss water to cool their shit instead of asking people to cut back on water usage?
WalterLego@lemmy.zip 33 minutes ago
They deregulated shower heads just in time.