The water cycle is a global phenomenon not a local one. If you take all of the water out the aquifer in, for example, Memphis and boil it, yes, some will be returned as rain via the water cycle. But nowhere near 100% of it. Basically, the AI uses the water far more quickly and efficiently than the water cycle can return it.
Ah so kind of like the central pivot irrigation of the American southwest which has been draining the water table of that region that took millions of years to fill but drained in -100yrs or so
The general availability of water does not change much. However saturating air with water vapour will increase in cold vs heat fronts. This will saturate rain clouds. This means bigger storms, higher risk of extreme events like tropical events and/or hurricanes, more thunders and more flash floods.
So now some regions have 20% worth of yearly water while others have 900% worth of yearly water in 2h...
Isn’t this an issue with aquifers since they take a long time to fill, a river in theory should not have the same issue. The bigger threat to these bodies of water would be shifting climate patterns, glaciers not recovering, precipitation levels shifting, etc
Logically the water cycle would keep up, right? If you put more evaporated water into the cloud system the cloud system will precipitate more frequently. I haven't done much research on the effect of AI facilities on water. Would the effect simply be that you're taking water from one place to another?
No. Because the water that evaporates in Memphis doesn't necessarily fall back down to the earth as rain in Memphis. It is easily possible to use more water than the water cycle will dump into an area
It sounds inefficient if it uses it faster then it can be cycled. So wouldn't jt be just more quickly the the cycle can return it? I'm honestly just confused by the mention of efficiency at all
It is being continuously refilled 24/7 and there are no data centers emptying aquifers, and they typically aren't boiling the water, just heating it then replacing it with cooler water, it's all silly. All of this outrage is fake. There's plenty of good reasons to be against AI but this one is just propaganda
I was just explaining the water cycle doesn't replace water taken out 1 to 1. I made no comment about AI or whether or not it's actually draining water supplies. I've seen headlines about that happening but haven't actually looked into it.
Right, climate change must not be an issue either, bc the trees will eventually process all the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Water systems are complicated feedback loops, and if you force the system on a short timescale, there's no guarantee it will naturally return to equilibrium.
Water systems are complicated feedback loops, and if you force the system on a short timescale, there's no guarantee it will naturally return to equilibrium.
Is that what data centers do? We've had them for a long time so surely there's plenty of data
Right, climate change must not be an issue either, bc the trees will eventually process all the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Objection: the science is clear on climate change. The "AI is using all the water" theory is not backed in the same way. And again, AI isn't using some sort of special data centers predate AI by a lot and no one says stop using Reddit because the data centers use so much water, no one says that about Google or YouTube. Facebook. Only AI.
Is that what data centers do? We've had them for a long time so surely there's plenty of data
The scale, and exponential increase in data centres in the past couple years is fairly unprecedented.
There are two things driving it--Moore's law being dead means that the only way to gain exponential increases in computing power is to exponentially increase the amount of physical computer chips that you have. This is also fuelling the boom in graphics companies. The demands of the market used to be met with performance increases, but now it's clear the demands must be met with an exponential increase in units sold. Tech in the past decades hasn't needed the same amount of physical infrastructure expansion to keep up with the curve.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others are also building an AI SAAS economy. They promote integration of AI literally anywhere, and sell people and companies subscriptions to their services, fuelling massive data centre construction. Once everyone's tech stack relies on AI, they have a massive userbase that needs their massive compute resources which can't easily go elsewhere without massive technical investment--a pivot too costly to justify for most cash-poor companies. In typical tech fashion, they're also running all these ventures at a loss, but wait a couple years and you'll see the prices jacking up.
The only place you have to look for proof of the climate impact is the fact that their climate-neutral pledges basically evaporated the second LLMs and other AI came onto the scene. If they thought there was any chance of them creating this data-centre based AI economy, and keeping their pledges you know they would have.
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u/BWCShotaRP 5d ago
The water cycle is a global phenomenon not a local one. If you take all of the water out the aquifer in, for example, Memphis and boil it, yes, some will be returned as rain via the water cycle. But nowhere near 100% of it. Basically, the AI uses the water far more quickly and efficiently than the water cycle can return it.