AI does not use much water. If you believe it does, like this article does, you have fallen for propaganda and lies, ironic in a post calling everyone using AI stupid.
The main cause of water fear mongering is that one woman’s well was dirty during construction of a data center. First construction is not the center running, and having lived on a well they get dirty for all kinds of reasons.
The electricity, air pollution and noise pollution are all from natural gas. Data centers aren’t loud, on site temporary natural gas turbines are. We can instead install solar and batteries and none of these will be issues. We already grow corn for fuel at 1/10th the land efficiency of solar so it’s not like we don’t have the land for it
I feel like there's a huge political/economic opportunity in the US simply from getting government to shift subsidies from corn/ethanol to solar. Of course you also have to get buy-in from the farmers, but.
I'm not talking about hypothetical possible futures in which people do the right thing. The datacenters that are being built right now and which are in operation right now use single-stage gas turbines, last I checked.
HVAC equipment can also cause a lot of noise pollution all on its own.
daedrdev · · focus · HN ↗
The main cause of water fear mongering is that one woman’s well was dirty during construction of a data center. First construction is not the center running, and having lived on a well they get dirty for all kinds of reasons.
phyzome · · focus · HN ↗
daedrdev · · focus · HN ↗
zahlman · · focus · HN ↗
phyzome · · focus · HN ↗
HVAC equipment can also cause a lot of noise pollution all on its own.