So when computer systems use water, it's typically in a closed cooling loop. The water is heated by the computer components and then cooled in a radiator before being returned to the computer components to absorb more heat and the cycle repeats.
So why do these articles always read like it's consuming water in a way that eliminates it from existence?
As far as I'm aware they're not taking water and turning it into something else like concrete, so what exactly is happening that it's reducing our fresh water supply on Earth?
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Data center water cooling isn't a closed loop. They generally don't use it like PC water cooling. There are exceptions, but servers are typically air cooled.
What they did is look for a less energy intensive way to cool the air than traditional air conditioning. So they turned to evaporative cooling, and also misting the incoming air. This reduced their energy use, but at the expense of water use.
It shows up in the inflow and outflow of water:
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sip-or-guzzle-heres-how-googles-data-centers-use-water
Most of the overall amount of "operational" water that Google used in 2021 is related to these data centers; it withdrew 6.3 billion gallons during that fiscal year, according to its 2022 Environmental Report. Of that amount, 1.7 billion was discharged.
They're evaporating away a lot more water than they return.
They're evaporating away a lot more water than they return.
Ok, but the point is once water evaporates it doesn't stay evaporated forever. It condenses and turns into rain or snow.
Where exactly do people think this water is going when it evaporates? Space?
"why does a decline in freshwater supply matter when it all ends up in the sea anyway?"
No. People are tracking useable water supplies. If it gets out of that, we don't care what happens to it.
We're draining aquifers to give people and industry drinkable, useable water (no matter how we feel about that). The water "still existing" somewhere else is an entirely pedantic point, and a huge waste of everyone's time.
I think it goes out of the cycle somewhat, kinda like all that is held up
If 100L rain down a day, and you use 10L for cooling then you will have still have 100L flowing but now only 90L for actual use. And then datacenters take up a significant amount of the total then you have a lot less to use elsewhere such as watering fields for example.
Where I live we have this huge river around our city that provides most of the province with freshwater (along with all of the rivers that feed into it, but the population concentrates around that one big river)
That one big river is also a place for ships to go through, and an ecosystem (despite all of the disruption).
More water in use by all kinds of facilities still manages to lower the level of the river significantly, to the point where there have been worries raised about the ecosystem and where shipping capacity was reduced.
If you're taking water and putting it in a closed loop, you're effectively removing it from the natural water cycle until you remove it from said closed loop, no?
I agree the articles make it sound more like they are just burning water out of existence lol.
I guess they put in perspective the scarcity of water and the increased usage of AI in the near future...
Right, but the way the article is worded it makes it sound like they're adding 500 mL of water to the loop every single time you enter a prompt.
Right. Makes not sense at all, but people gobble it up the same way they blame bitcoin for the environment because the narrative is that it uses a lot of power. It’s not about the power, it is about how carbon intensive the generation method is. Such a great distraction.
Except you're both fundamentally wrong about how data center cooling works. It's not closed loop water cooling, they use evaporative cooling by misting the cooling air. There's no 'great distraction' here, just some attention to one of very many problems with how we run large data centers.
Google’s data centres use 4.3B gallons of water a year which is about the same as a city of 100,000 people. I think we have bigger things to worry about. Like MUCH bigger things than a literally drop in the bucket.
AI has environmental contributions?
The article seems to conflate AI, Farm specific AI, and technological advancements. They call out a lot of ways that tech advancements and targeted applications of AI can help save water / find new solutions. It's lightweight on the fidnigns, but whatever. They then go to talk about data centers using a lot of water. It's related, but not really the same thing.
Once we start using it to optimize infrastructure, architecture, logistics etc
And what's the number for crypto mining?
What has this to do with the topic?
It's another massive use of computing power, but this time with nearly no chance of producing anything useful.
I think it's a valid thing to consider along with the same question about AI.
I partly agree. AI has really little chance to produce anything useful if we use it the way we do now. I'm not so sure with the blockchain technology. We needed more decentralized networks in our economy and society, and blockchain is just one technology that can help here imho. It's true that the vast majority of crypto projects represents a blend of scams and get-rich-quick schemes, but there are some fine projects that do a good job imo.
I get 'useful' stuff from AI all the time. Nothing major, but little timesavers, unique character art for a DnD game, language and grammar suggestions when I'm writing short stories with my wife. That kinda thing.
Crypto offers me nothing. I have absolutely no use case for an average person's life. I'm sure there are businesses that can utilize crypto to some benefit, but frankly I couldn't care less about their ability to hide money and evade taxes.
You may not be fully aware of where AI is being used. The LLMs get a lot of press for both being impressive and at the same time not living up to expectations. However, there are other AI efforts that are having real results.
I support radiology imaging at a large U.S. health system, and there are several different AI systems being tested and deployed that assist with diagnosis. It may not get a lot of mainstream articles published, but it allows doctors to treat patients more efficiently, which has the potential to both reduce costs and increase access to care.
I'm sure there are similar efforts in every other industry.
Yes, I know. I don't say it's all bad. It improves human decision making in a lot of things. What I meant is that it has been doing also a lot of harm in the last few years, e.g., in the U.S. where insurer UnitedHealth allegedly used an AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, or in The Netherlands and in France, just to name examples. And I'm afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg
But I'd agree that it's not the technologies, it's the way we humans use them.
For comparison? Why?
Depends on the "crypto"
That's why they build data centers in places where there's loads of water.
surely nestle and coke are using orders of magnitude more. Also don't many Americans drink bottled water when tap water is completely fine in most areas? I read somewhere it was a weird cultural quirk, you know like refusing to use the metric system. I'm not saying shouldn't check AIs footprint, but water seems a werid one to go after.
Rain World moment