[agentultra]

Breaking it down this way is a great way to minimize the numbers so that it appears reasonable.

See? Middle-Eastern investors are growing alfalfa in the western desert using legal allotments of water! That is so much worse than what we’re doing! Go after them!

They can both be using an egregious amount of water for silly purposes.

The other part of the water debate is also the pollution different systems create. Many data centres went in with the promise of closed-loop systems but changed half-way through construction and couldn’t be stopped.

I think it’s more complicated than, “they’re wrong, it’s just hype.”

[rdedev]

Putting things into perspective is not minimising the problem. We literally have to do this to prioritise where our efforts can be useful.

Your argument makes sense if ai datacenters were using something close to like alfafa farming but the difference between them is soo massive it does not make sense.

Reducing pollution is a much better problem to fight for

[yubblegum]

I am guessing (not asserting) that there is a sort of cap on water used for agriculture. It's possible we've already reached it. (?)

So, on the matter of scale: there likely isn't a cap on water use of these datacenters. Both the heat emission and usage levels for these systems will likely go up unless there is a fundamental technical breakthrough.

On the matter of utility: As a sibling of GP mentioned, the utility of food is clear.

On the matter of polution: I am not remotely read on waste water and contamination due to industrial agriculture. Is this also something where the judgmental scale is tipped in favor of food production vs cooling systems?

[luckydata]

what is the utility of alfaalfa? Because as it stands it's essentially just a way to export enormous amounts of water from a place where there's little (California) to a place where there's none (the Arabian peninsula).

This is bullshit to be charitable.

[yubblegum]

Your alfalfa is a red herring. Agriculture encompasses more than a specific crop that we can always legislate against production for export. The data centers will not go away and the utility of the "AI" they are to enable is as of today dubious.

> This is bullshit to be charitable.

What is bullshit is sockpuppets shilling for the very few who have bet the 'farm' on this and want return on their investment, the wellbeing of society be damned.

[scarmig]

Everything we do has side effects. Some have more than others; in the case of water, even heavy users of AI have a relatively small AI water footprint compared other things they do.

There are ideological perspectives--another comment in this chain declares that anything that an LLM does has zero value, purely by virtue of being from an LLM. There's not much to discuss there: maybe I find alfalfa useless and LLMs provide a lot of value, maybe you do the opposite. Short of violence, either immediate or delegated, the best way to resolve this conflict is to incorporate costs for resources like water appropriately (accounting for externalities), and let market participants bid to determine who gets access to it.

Datacenter owners are highly likely to find this a reasonable process, because they believe that what they are investing in and operating will provide a great deal of value on the market. And other industries (like your alfalfa) are far more likely to throw a fit at this process.

Or if you think alfalfa farms have fundamental, deep-seated water rights that don't extend to data centers, then data center operators can just purchase water from alfalfa farmers, and everyone involved will eagerly make that trade.

[luckydata]

some might call it "perspective"

[agentultra]

Well the other thing is that agricultural uses are generally on a different scale and use different sources. And at least you can eat almonds and alfalfa. Probably more useful than asking an LLM to autocomplete your homework. Depending on your needs.

Even amongst municipal water usage, it seems hard to figure out how much DC usage factors in to other uses because often they’re not required, and therefore don’t, disclose their usage.

All I’m saying is that it’s not a closed case and not everyone complaining about DC water usage is a Russian propaganda bot.