[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.