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by kennywinker 22 days ago
Beef uses water, but you can eat beef.

Ai uses water, but you can’t eat ai.

Can you see the difference?

4 comments

>> If water is the problem then why are we ignoring how much water beef needs? If we measure per person use it is hundreds times more than data center usage

> Ai uses water, but you can’t eat ai.

Almost all other foods don't use trillions of gallons of water like beef does. If someone's goal was to reduce water use, then shouldn't they be making at least as much noise about the non-necessary thing using far more water compared to data center's billions, not trillions, of gallons?

Point I am making is if we need to tackle the water issue then we need to do it via 80/20 rule, focus on the elephant in the room first. Data centers are a fly in a room with an elephant in this case.
No, that logic does not make any sense whatsoever.
Was anyone proposing to eat AI? Was anyone proposing to do data processing with a pot roast?

Why is the difference in what specific use case the consumers of these products are serving with them one that's relevant to the discussion?