[uncertainrhymes]

I was taken aback recently when a Gen-ish Z person told me AI was 'destroying all the water'. I've done data center work, and while I know it is used for cooling, I don't think I've ever personally destroyed any large bodies of water.

There is a perception out there about GenAI and water that goes surprisingly deep. I was told we are will be living in a drought-stricken hellscape, and AI is to blame.

I'd like to know the equivalent energy consumption of a single TikTok video, but that is probably arguing the wrong thing. My bigger question is ... where do they think that water goes? Steam? The assumption is that it is gone forever, and I can't get over how people could just take that at face value.

[kmod]

I was also surprised when someone asked me about AI's water consumption because I had never heard of it being an issue. But a cursory search shows that datacenters use quite a bit more water than I realized, on the order of 1 liter of water per kWh of electricity. I see a lot of talk about how the hyperscalers are doing better than this and are trying to get to net-positive, but everything I saw was about quantifying and optimizing this number rather than debunking it as some sort of myth.

I find "1 liter per kWh" to be a bit hard to visualize, but when they talk about building a gigawatt datacenter, that's 278L/s. A typical showerhead is 0.16L/s. The Californian almond industry apparently uses roughly 200kL/s averaged over the entire year -- 278L/s is enough for about 4 square miles of almond orchards.

So it seems like a real thing but maybe not that drastic, especially since I think the hyperscaler numbers are better than this.

[Manuel_D]

Water shortages are highly local problems. Sure, running a data center in Arizona might have some genuine water concerns. But even then, it can be mitigated by changes like using wastewater. The Palo Verde plant does that for its heat exchangers.

[jeffbee]

The existing golf courses in Arizona alone use more water than the entire global data center industry.

[yodon]

Data centers use evaporative cooling.

Data centers don't just heat up the water and return it - they evaporate the water into the atmosphere (yes, I know, the H2O still exists, but it's in a far less usable form when it's gaseous atmospheric H2O)

[kleton]

The Meta FTW data centers use evaporative chillers, but they re-condense the water so that it's a closed loop.

[Bratmon]

The implicit claim that data centers don't recondense the water they evaporate is surprising to me.

Do you have a source?

[xnx]

Water molecules are definitely not being destroyed, but they are often completely removed from a place where they were useful.

Aral Sea was destroyed by farm irrigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBjDF4SFIlk

[richwater]

Destroying the water originates as a NIMBY talking point (to stop data centers) that was co-opted by anti-capitalist groups (higher membership rates among GenZ) as a boogeyman to blame for why AI is bad.

[more_corn]

Data centers do consume a lot of water, but even more power. AI is causing us to forget our climate change carbon goals. The global increase in drought is probably more a result of climate change temperatures than direct consumption. (Yes AI is doing it but not in the way most people thought)

[scruple]

It's probably best (for your mental health) to not ask these questions in earnest.

[gjsman-1000]

It's probably best, for your mental health, to ask these questions in earnest, and stop dismissing people as illogical. The communities living near data centers have real water problems, making it believable. If you're wondering why NIMBY happens, just watch the first 30 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjj7wDYaiI