[joegibbs]

The water argument is way overblown. Even based on the worst figures from the article "OpenAI’s older model would be using 31 million liters of water per day, or 8.18 million gallons" - this is 2 billion gallons of water per year. A single Californian pistachio grower uses 130 billion gallons a year, likely more than the entire AI industry, for quite a niche crop. Don't even think about the water usage of staples like cotton or beef.

Also, before the AI boom there were still huge numbers of GPUs using the same water and power that AI was using to run things like Netflix and YouTube (not exactly vital for human existence) - and still are - yet AI is treated like unique sin against the environment.

[TheNewsIsHere]

Could you cite the source on your claim that a single pistachio farmer uses 130 billion-with-a-b gallons of water a year, please?

Do you mean a particular farm, or “any” farmer in the abstract?

[lewispollard]

Seems to be referencing this Forbes article, specifically talking about The Wonderful Company:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/11/21/how-m...

[TheNewsIsHere]

I suspected this was about a singular case. Any typical pistachio farm doesn’t need anywhere near that kind of water.

Here we’d be talking about “the corporate name” in pistachios. That’s a very different thing from what “a” typical pistachio farmer needs. I submit the original comment is cherry-picking to make their argument.

A pistachio tree needs something like (on average) 60 gallons of water a day.

For one 365-day year that is 21,900 gallons/tree/year.

That’s a lot of water, of course. But most farms do not have in excess of 5.39 million pistachio trees (using the 130 billion gallon number).

[enqk]

The water argument is an easy to destroy distraction to avoid discussing power usage and CO2 emissions.

[msgodel]

California has issues with people abusing water because they refuse to bill for use. If they did that the problem would solve itself.

[rezonant]

I assure you water is not free in California. It is billed on a usage basis just like everywhere else.