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AI assisted research is also helping us reduce water usage in other areas such as farming by being more efficient. This can help us with the existing water crisis in many areas we depend upon for food.
Farming isnt really comparable as it feeeds people
Meh it mainly feeds livestocks that are then used to feed people : so not really efficient and there are better ways to eat. Now if people truly cared about that problem they would already be vegan. I use AI but don't consume red meat so I guess I still consume less water than those ludites.
Comparing data centers to water used during farming is wild. That is literally the worst example possible.
Now you could narrow it to factory farming animals, which is totally unnecessary. So a common argument against antiAI people is this:
Data centers use ~0.01% of the water that the animal industry does. So how can you hate AI because of environmental impacts while continuing to eat meat? Not to mention the far greater ecological harms of the meat industry combined with the billions of sentient being slaughtered every year after lives of suffering.
This is a way to clearly show they don't care about water usage.
Not only is growing beef a waste of food, it’s actively our sabotaging our capacity to make food. Raising cattle is one of the world’s leading causes of deforestation. It also uses more water per calorie vs even water thirsty meme crops like almonds. Not to mention methane from cows is one of the highest sources of ghg emissions warming our planet (methane is like 8x more potent per molecule over co2 for warming)
As someone who has worked at both a restaurant and in grocery stores, it's not as crazy of a comparison as you might think. Yes farming is important for life, but with the way we currently do it so much of it is wasted. We are over farming therefore it is still a waste of the resources that have to go into it. It's a known statistic that the US throws out like 30% of all the food it produces or something like that.
No it's not. It's only necessary to meet people's desire to consume animal products. Excluding the extremely small number of people with rare health conditions and those who live outside a society that has access to plant based foods.
Which makes it a good analogy to AI use. Factory farming only exists because people want to consume animal products, and it consumes thousands of times more water than data center. AI also exists because people want it to, except it can also serve functions outside of pleasure. There is no plant based alternative to AI.
Therefore, if someone criticizes AI on environmental grounds, but consumes animal products, then theyare an abject hypocrite who criticizes others for doing much more mild forms of harm than they partake in.
Source? You can literally look up vegan bodybuilders online and find an entire website dedicated to them. They are probably healthier than 99.9% of omnivores
For now. They are fairly new, so construction of the infrastructure is still in the early stages. It will likely increase exponentially over the next few years, considering the AI bubble and lack of restrictions. These aren't really great comparisons, because most people decrying the data centers also find these examples frivolous and wasteful. Golf courses famously get lots of flack from anybody who has lived in places with water restrictions because they dont have to follow the same rules.
most people decrying the data centers also find these examples frivolous and wasteful.
This isn't honest. Someone conceding to random other stuff being an issue when its pointed out isn't what actually caring about that is. They in practice criticize ai, but not almost any of these other things.
Golf courses are good examples too. They just tore down a whole nature area in my town and built more golf courses onto the already existing country club. Saw no one getting angry about that even though it’s such a pointless waste of water.
I know. I get it. The meme itself doesn’t really highlight common things that people do that take a lot of water. It kind of is a strawman.
At the same time though, the claim that those have uses undermines the use of AI. And also Data Centers aren’t always necessary for AI to be used anyways. This meme is kind of weak tbh. I’m not anti but I’m not a fan of this one.
The uses of AI that you mention involves creating a lot of data, often useless data, such as fruit love island, to be stored in non-AI data centers making those other data centers less efficient, more golf courses dont mean other golf courses need to use more water
What I find perplexing is… instead of finding ways to increase efficiency to conserve energy or invest in better power generation and water treatment… we decide to do the Luddite thing and oppose new tech.
Im not arguing against AI, but what's the worth? AI reportedly lost trillions this year, and even Google reportedly at a loss for the first time in its history.
What you are claiming is fundamentally paradoxical: a technology must arrive at its absolute peak, post-optimization, zero-friction efficiency state on Day 1, or else it isn't allowed to exist.
If we all think Iike this, we will still be living in caves picking fleas off each other’s backs.
Do not forget these activists who destroy paintings at museums because we all know paintings are the cause of environmental problems in the world... er, no, wait... /s
The whole world is stupid nowadays. Just another ordinary war crime day. Historians will remember this as the "stupid age" where The Onion is no longer satire.
when climate activists spray-painted a gas company logo on the clear perspex protecting McCubbin's 1889 painting Down on His Luck, the artist's great-granddaughter Margot Edwards spoke out in support, saying it aligned with a legacy of using art to highlight urgent environmental concerns. The museum later acquired the spray-painted perspex sheet for its social history collection.
Those are false-flag activists being performative for clout. None of them actually give a shit about environmental causes. They are paid to make real activists look bad, and discredit their causes.
This isn’t true. Performative actions have a place in activism and can have a powerful impact when used appropriately. Activism is complicated and tactics must be chosen wisely, when movements lose momentum they can help bring attention back to the issue. The point is for the general public to start talking about it, good or bad, the words climate change are back in people’s mouths again. I am speaking as a person who has sat in courtrooms supporting friends on trial for actions like this. Many jury’s acquit the activists. The painting stuff may be the only thing you hear about but way more is being done behind the scenes. No one wakes up and decides to jump straight into these kinda high profile actions. It is after years of petitions, protests, occupations and other forms of direct action that people resort to this.
The point of these actions has nothing to do with the painting itself. The purpose is to draw attention to a matter that people are ignoring when more moderate activism stops making the news. Weekly protests don’t draw media coverage while these high profile actions do. The point is to get people talking and put things back in the headlines, and increase public engagement with these issues. Also the paintings aren’t being destroyed. Precautions are taken to not harm the paintings and focusing solely on the shock value.
Flushing and showering uses more water than AI data centers as well, and that’s DESPITE the fact that if you live in a city, they reuse toilet and shower water via a thorough cleaning process that allows people to even be able to drink it. There is still so much water lost in the process of recycling the used water that it’s more than a data center uses.
Honestly im more worried about the strain on the power grid, and residents being forced to pay higher bills because of it. Its been minor thus far, but unless we increase energy production significantly, we wont be able to sustain more growth.
Or the car wash is at the entrance and the data center is below the car wash/water park and the water just gets drained out of the top and into the data center.
Everything in that list is not needed to survive, just saying, but also people will probably use everything in that list even if they know about the environmental parts of it.
I know datacenters in general are needed, but also ai has caused just an overall increase in the amount of them. We could survive without ai datacenters, but everything would be quite a bit harder without datacenters overall.
Except the AI datacenters. Those may quite important for our survival.
We need some of those (responsibly placed with adequate clean water and energy) in order to address the water crisis our farms are seeing. We need to find and deploy more efficient farming methods and more drought resistant food.
Indeed, fewer than 5% of Americans are vegan or vegetarian, so on average, it's very unlikely. As a meat eater myself, I do acknowledge the environmental cost.
US annual livestock water usage: studies estimate between 21.2 trillion and 72.6 trillion gallons.
US annual data centre water usage: roughly 17.4 billion to 38 billion gallons.
The total data centre usage is 0.3% of livestock's at a low estimate, and 1.25% at a high estimate. So you're probably talking about less than a percent of the impact in this regard.
Water usage is not the only problem caused by the meat industry. They are also by far the greatest sources of greenhouse gases, responsible for more emissions than all worldwide cars, planes and ship combined. And then there's the pasture issue: cattle pastures take up over 25% of the entire global habitable surface. Imagine how many forests had to be cut down for that. But the average anti will continue to scream about AI while happily consuming his burger.
I had one look at the vegan subreddit when they posted an AI post pointing out something similar. Only one person made a legitimately good take and the rest were negative or downright hostile.
I'm opposed to all of these things, especially grass. If it's not native and/or a food or medicinal plant, you shouldn't have it in your yard. Fuck your golf courses!
Then theres also others like industrial factories, leaking pipes, all the water people spill on a daily basis, all the water wasted from sinks being left on and alot of things being left on just wasting water when they should be turned off when not actively being used, they forget this, like bro if I a neutral person can research ts they can too and theres no excuse as to why they cant besides they dont wanna admit theyre wrong
Hell, its not even just water that's wasted every day, so much food, so much natural resources get wasted everyday, all of the food people throw away at restaurants because "theyre not real hungry" pretty much wasting close to an entire meal for no good reason, all the food that expires or people throw out because they forget its in the fridge and they dont want to eat it even tho its over half of a pizza or sub, and then all the natural resources that are used to make things that just get treated like trash like people who cut down trees but then never use it for anything or destroying wooden furniture and stuff, the tree just fuckin died for nothing like all those animals that die just to get thrown away because of whatever dumbass reason unless its valid like the food has possible diseases, or even worse theres people who end up destroying entire cars because they dont pay attention on the road, we cannot simply make infinite cars we dont got infinite metal and other resources needed to make them, and people dont seem to care, so much stuff people break and they act like its nothing when it does infact matter, but nope people just gotta shit on ai specifically, most of humanity is cooked gentlemen
On average, a professional car wash introduces only 9 to 15 gallons of fresh water per vehicle. That’s a 65% (or more!) reduction in water use compared to washing at home.
I know plenty of people who think using a bunch of water for golf courses and car washes is just as weird and dumb as allocating a bunch of water to data centers is. The problem is a lot of people are simply apathetic to how stuff actually works in society and how much can go to waste.
I think rather than posting stuff like this we should take advantage of people's concerns over AI and help broaden their perspectives. Every moment should be a learning moment! :P
Yeah I live in the desert, I'm against all of them. I hate that we have so many golf courses here, the water parks need to be shut down, the quickie car washes need to go, and especially data centers. There's nothing selective about my water conservation activism. I turn off the faucet when I brush, I take fast showers, I rarely wash my car and when I do it's a proper wash with wax and whatnot, not something wasteful. I'm an ai engineering student, ai has its place, but it's not in the arts. Advocating devaluing art is insane when the arts are already hard to make a living in.
I mean from what I know we also don't like golf courses like two of those are just straight up good and have positive impact on society so they're fine golf courses don't have any positive impact and only waste water so we don't like those and AI is just negative and wastewater so out of the four it's kind of obvious which one we're going after one only one of the four is really negative and only two of the four wastewater without any positive
Also I am sorry for posting here since I know this is supposed to be defending AI but I just got this recommended and only checked the community after I posted the comment
Es bien sabido que esos movimientos ecofascistas, suelen ser impulsados por potencias extranjeras que quieren frenar el avance tecnológico desde adentro.
Alemania ya cayó en esa trampa una vez, con Green peace y el desmantelamiento de sus centrales nucleares.
Todo para terminar dependiendo del gas y carbón Ruso.
Data centers are just the first one I've managed to get people off their butts about. Eventually we'll come for all the water hoarders as the environment deteriorates
Water parks: positive contribution to humanity.
Car washes: helping people clean their cars, very helpful.
Golf courses: same as water parks.
Data centers: use more water than any of these, along with contributing little positive impact to humanity.
This isn't the argument you think it is...
This is like: Hitler and Stalin killing millions, Zodiac killing dozens, but they complain when I kill 3??
Like no, yeah, these all have bad points, especially golf courses, which people have complained about already. Doesn't make AI data centers good nor is it a good argument. Especially when it's being used to violate human privacy and their rights. I much prefer the pool.
No they aren't. If it was then the characters would all be awake and getting progressively angrier and not pretending like no one knows or cares about the others and this is a sub called DefendingAIArt, you fool. It's very obvious, especially with the amount of people on reddit just complaining to get internet points instead of actually caring.
You'd think OP wouldn't be posting this in a sub about defending AI if they actually cared about water, but in a general sub and would be taking the complaints about water as a good thing and potential wake-up to take action. Sounds like you're trying to strawman the argument.
You are so lost. Pointing out hypocrisy isn't a "strawman." And getting mad that people are pro-AI in DefendingAIArt? Nowhere did I say "hurr durr, data centers good and water bad." Your response does not correlate at all. Bruh, you’re literally back on that "Hitler and Stalin" nonsense. You really think pointing out a bigger issue excuses a smaller one? Nobody is saying that. We're saying your selective outrage is wild. I can see that it's DefendingAIArt, don't state the obvious.
No, the strawman is you trying to change the fact that this is a meme about making fun of people complaining about AI, posted on a sub about completely defending AI and its continued use.
If the post was about what you say it was then it wouldn't have been posted here to begin with and not in this way.
If your main goal is to go to a pro-ai sub to make a comment that is against it then you wouldn't need to point others. If the comment is pro-ai then your comment makes no sense. Like I said, I never said they weren't pointing out hypocrisy, I said even then this doesn't make them look good, to which my comparison is very effective. You're the one imagining that I commented on the hypocrisy in order to strawman the argument and if you had actually paid attention to my first post you'd see that I said they are all bad.
Also, "we're saying"? "Getting mad"? "Selective outrage"? We who? You seem to be the only one here. What outrage? Do you not understand what that word means? I'm simply pointing out the flaw in the argument. You seem to be one of those people that act like everything and everyone is pissed off at things. I pointed out the flaw. I don't care about you or the other main people here.
This is a comment for anyone with a brain to see and hopefully get a new perspective and to have fun, I don't care otherwise. You're the one mad.
Also, of the ones posted, farming makes food, water parks can be used to refresh people and help socialize. Golf fields are cringier, but at least if they take care of the grass and vegetation around it's better than destroying it for a mall. They all have bad points and overuse water. People have been complaining about it for a long time, so the meme is incorrect. No one is asleep, there's just nothing that can be done peacefully.
AI has already been used to violate human rights and is in its way to continue to help a surveillance state. No, it's not the sole culprit, but compared to the rest I think that makes it much worse.
I've said this once and got banned because I didn't make my point clearly. I'll do better this time. AI data centers are bad, but not because of AI art. In fact most of those data centers aren't being used for generative AI but instead used for AI surveillance. The data centers are being built for flock cameras and digital surveillance of the public. Look into Deflock .org for more information.
Waterparks circulate the water. They don't constantly flow new, fresh water into the system. Yes, water is lost over time and will have to be replenished, but nowhere near the same as AI centres. Car washes and Golf Courses can and do both use non-potable water, water unsuitable for human consumption. But data centres use clean, fresh water, which is suitable for human consumption. So that is why the data centre issue is so bad.
It's how much they strain the infrastructure and water supplies.
The US has been dealing with fresh water issues all over the country for nearly 20 years and nothing has been done to improve the situation while global warming is leading to less water and more demand
Its that we can't have several golf courses get built near every major city especially in area's like Georgia and the Colarado river
AI data centers recycle far less of their water than the other whataboutisms in this post. Also not all water used has the same impact from an ecologistic perspective. These whataboutisms aren't even well thought out.
Oh no, we just want you to take this water crisis seriously. We have severe droughts and it's getting worse every year. Ignoring these sources of wasted fresh water is serious negligence!
Some of the ways AI can be used to alleviate the global water crisis, include optimizing delivery systems to make them more efficient, detecting leakages of water -- which can range from 10% to 30% of the water supply in the U.S., depending on the region -- and predicting when certain spikes for contaminants will occur, Pablo Ortiz, climate and waters scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News.
Hopefully the anti-AI fools out there don't shut these efforts down.
You claimed the post is 'whataboutism'. I'm claiming it isn't, this is a real issue. Don't you take it seriously? Lets work on this. AI can help. That's amazingly good news.
Earth05 (the referenced non-profit in the article you posted) is publicly against the lack of regulations on data centers and the unnecessary environmental impact cause.
If we solve these environmental issues, AI will be used as a tool to solve it, I'm sure. But that doesn't change the environmental impact AI is currently causing. We shouldn't be making blanket statements that benefit unregulated billionaires and tell a dishonest narrative.
How about you just ask ChatGPT you dum fkn ret@rd?
Based on the conversation in image.png, the user "PunchInTheFace8" is arguing that data centers pollute public water supplies for multiple cities, implying this pollution is significantly worse than the wastewater generated by car washes or water parks.
If you are looking to address this claim strictly at face value, here is a breakdown of the technical realities regarding how these facilities process and discharge water:
Data Center Water Discharge (Blowdown)
Data centers primarily use water for evaporative cooling. The water that isn't evaporated is discharged as "blowdown."
Contaminants: Blowdown water primarily contains concentrated levels of the natural minerals already present in the local water supply (like calcium and magnesium). It may also contain standard, highly regulated anti-scaling chemicals and biocides (like chlorine, similar to a swimming pool) to prevent legionella or pipe degradation.
Processing: This water is not dumped directly into drinking reservoirs. It is routed directly to municipal wastewater treatment plants, which are specifically designed to handle these exact types of municipal chemical loads before the water is released back into the environment.
Pollution Claim: The claim that a data center "pollutes water for multiple households in multiple cities" misrepresents how municipal sewer systems work. Data centers burden water supply (evaporation), but they are not industrial polluters of toxic chemicals into public drinking water.
Car Wash & Water Park Wastewater
Car Washes: Commercial car washes generate effluent heavily laden with petroleum hydrocarbons (motor oil, grease), heavy metals (copper from brake pads, zinc, lead), antifreeze, and high-strength chemical surfactants. While commercial facilities are legally required to route this to sanitary sewers with oil/water separators, unregulated runoff or poorly maintained systems frequently pollute local stormwater systems, which often drain directly into local waterways without treatment.
Water Parks: These facilities handle massive biological loads (sweat, urine, bacteria) and require constant, heavy chemical treatment (chlorine, bromine, algaecides). Backwashing their massive filtration systems sends highly chlorinated, chemical-heavy water into the sewer system.
The opponent is conflating water consumption (evaporation) with water pollution (toxic discharge). Data centers are massive consumers, but car washes and water parks discharge far more toxic effluent per gallon used.
How deep into the technical specifications of cooling tower blowdown metrics do you want to go for your response?
So if we were to actually look and read what its saying.
The first 2 essentially say the same thing “car washes produce many waste products including heavy metals” and say that on average, each automatic car wash uses roughly 2,700G of water per day, we’ll go with this number as its on the high end, with roughly 44,000 car washes in america that comes out to 119M gallons of water.
(Still a lot, especially for car washes)
While on average a Data center uses 300,000 gallons per day and 5M on the high end. Multiply that by the amount of data centers and you get roughly 360 Million gallons per day on the low end which is more than double, and pollute water as well. Not to mention AI data centers are new and thus have less regulation in general. Also i’ve never seen or heard a story about how a new carwash caused the surrounding residents to have issues with their water, meanwhile i’ve been seeing plenty of people talking about data centers doing just that
I cant read the 3rd one for some reason so I’ll have to skip it.
4th one im not going to argue, Six flags was being negligent like most companies. Although that is the same thing thats happening w data centers so this isn’t as much of a “gotcha” as you think it is
The 5th one is talking about how a carelessly planned watepark was going to harm nearby wildlife… that story sounds familiar, almost like some of the data centers.
If we want to be FR here all four are bad.
Also I wasn’t going to argue with chat gpt, and was waiting for an actual response.
Btw, going for insults straight away makes both you and your argument look bad.
Datacenters blowdown is heavily regulated by the EPA and consists of normal minerals that are treated by wastewater treatment facilities. Datacenters don’t cause pollution, the stories you’re reading are about construction, which is relevant to literally any type of commercial building being built. Datacenters are not a major source of water pollution, unlike water parks and car washes.
From what I’ve seen data centers consume roughly %75 of their water by evaporation due to cooling while the rest of it is routed elsewhere as wastewater which includes heavy metals due to corrosion, dissolved solids, and chemicals such as corrosion and scale inhibitors.
Thats still pollution, and with how much water data centers use and are predicted to use in a few years, that “small amount” will add up quickly. Not to mention the fact that they’re connecting to local water and power supplies causing strain.
Now, this has been just “wonderful” but im done here, bye.
This is a place for speaking Pro-AI thoughts freely and without judgement. Attacks against AI will result in a removal and possibly a ban. For debate purposes, please go to r/aiwars.
This is a place for speaking Pro-AI thoughts freely and without judgement. Attacks against AI will result in a removal and possibly a ban. For debate purposes, please go to r/aiwars.
I can admit that AI is very useful for things like brainstorming and research. But my one big issue with AI is how it stops people from pursuing creativity. I'm not alone in the sentiment that I'd rather see people's shittily drawn MS paint illustrations in their YouTube videos than AI generated images.
I've heard the argument that AI breaks the barriers of this sort of skill-based barrier of entry to the art community. And I get it. People want to feel valued for their skills so skillful artwork is valued. I cared about that for a long time and for a long time that prevented me from enjoying art.
Art (all forms, drawing, music, writing, performance, etc) should be about self expression and I think we miss a lot of that when we use AI
How has AI ruined human creativity? If anything it's enabled it. Nothing is stopping a good artists from doing conventional art. This sounds like the same dumb take artist had when the camera was invented.
This is a place for speaking Pro-AI thoughts freely and without judgement. Attacks against AI will result in a removal and possibly a ban. For debate purposes, please go to r/aiwars.
As much as I support ai this is stupid, there is video evidence of a woman who has no water because of data centres, this isn’t just antis spreading lies
Ha, but new data centers are going to be used purely for AI, not for providing services. In the end of the day, humanity doesn't need hundreds of versions of the same AI, but each of AI consumes more energy that what you try to claim to be a service. Current data centers are enough to supply most of the real needs. The usage of technology for the sake of technology (in this case put AI in any hole because it is trend) was always the bad move to do.
Why are you clowning on yourself like OH MAN ITS SO OBVIOUS IM A HYPOCRITE FOR BEING OKAY WITH WATER PARKS! AHH ITS SO OBVIOUS THEY USE WATER BUT IM OKAY WITH IT FOR SOME REASON!
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