Clojurians Log v2

I am unable to see the full text. What are the arguments about electricity and water?

https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-data-center-electricity-water/687521/

Apologies, did not realise not everyone could open it. The link @jeaye shared works I think

One argument for water use is that he claims it is a closed system. I seem to recall that this contradicts how water is used (evaporation)? And the part of electricity seems to come down to just build them where there is enough of it (paraphrasing here). He does mention that an often cited article (I have seen it used here as well) regarding the use of water is way off the mark

Having run some hardware for both inference and training on my homelab, I don't think either water use or power use is overblown, this technology is simply bad news for the environment.

I can't imagine it doing any good that is for sure. There is no way around it. It uses a lot of resources

I saw today it uses 0.9% of the water of us golf courses. It seems a good allocation of resources if that is true

And more productive than gpus used for gaming. If we need to justify compute resources

This article says that too. He mentioned 66bln liters annually but does not say how many data centers. Instead he makes a meaningless comparison

To almond farming and golf? That's helpful to list how many trillions of gallons of water they use compared to billions for AI. Helpful statistic to me

Golf courses and almond farms are definitely not closed loops

meaning they use more water? and the closed loop of the data centers just recycles the same water?

Yes. I assume that the water used on golf courses evaporates

It's a complex thing. We are using too much resources and ai isn't going to help.

Every time I look into water use, I see that it's actually using a shit ton and every argument its not are just choosing not to count all of the water actually used.

When you include the water used for power generation, construction, material build, cooling, etc. And you project it on the estimated growth curve, it's definitely like, a lot of water.

more than golf?

the big difference is the water it uses evaporates fully. Golf, farming etc, gets absorbed into the earth and back into the water table.

So in the case of using local water, it drains the water table.

There is this vid about water use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc It’s been a while since I watched it but it's take is more ‘it’s complicated’. I believe it argues that the water use might not be too bad, but it heavily depends on where and what you consider how bad it is. It’s not a pro-AI (or against, for that matter) video in general, it's just evaluating whether water is the thing to focus on

(It also falls in the popular science category, so probably trust actual scientific publications more)

Yeah, I think water is somewhat of a distraction.

Like, it's not great. But, the insane energy usage is probably more of an issue.

I think it's more than a golf course, but close. Say an average AI data center total cost is 200 million gallons a year and a golf course is 120 million gallons a year. But the issue is that by 2035 it's projected we'd have massively increased the total number of AI data centers so like adding 1000 new golf courses over a short 15 year time period. And unlike golf courses, those data centers cluster in certain places that are often already water constrained.

Being water constrained, or having a reliance on a certain water temperature for aquatic live, are arguments made in the video I linked. Real problems on a local level.

That's my biggest gripe with arguing one way or another: the argument is often more complicated. So if OpenAI says ‘little water use* (* for inference)’ they offer this flat and simple stat. The reality is much more complicated, with model training and geolocation of data centers and all sorts of variables — it just doesn't make as flashy as an argument.

We need this nuance back tho

(Not against anyone in this thread btw, just personal frustration)

Ya exactly, every time I looked more into it it was like. Ya it's definitely an issue, water and energy use both, and obviously a lot of the water use is from the energy demand itself. The problem is all these costs are externalized for our taxes to pay and our land to suffer the wear and tear.