I keep hearing that AI wastes water with water cooling, but everything I can think of that uses water cooling is looped and recycles coolant without destroying it. If AI used a closed loop of coolant how is it “consuming” water?
Does AI actually “consume” water?
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Where do you “keep hearing” this from?
Have you heard of the water cycle?
There was a science podcast that said that for every question you ask chat GPT, a glass of water is used for cooling. I’m not stating it is true. This is just what I heard.
You still need a chilled water loop for heat exchange with the closed loop. Anyone using evaporative cooling to chill the water is going to go through a fuck ton of water to gain that additional energy efficiency.
The water is highly contaminated with crap that we can’t “just filter out” when its changed out.
So, yes, AI wastes water.
These are data centers with giant servers, not single computers with a closed loop cooling system. The heat generated is way more than a traditional water cooled pc could handle so these are using evaporative cooling and not recycling it in a closed loop. The evaporated water is consumed.
Yeah it’s good to stay hydrated when you are working hard. It just orders more water from Amazon
Half of me thinks we should start putting servers at the bottom of the ocean for cooking needs. Then the other half remembers how Warhammer 40K predicted the seas would boil, and I don’t want that to come true.
There are different cooling systems in data centers. But yes. The two most common cooling systems today are chillers with cooling towers and adiabatic freecooling. Both of them use water as a consumable element. The first one uses ordinary water. It gets heavily contaminated with bacteria during operation (that’s why safety measures are required, after all, legionellosis is no joke), and in addition, a constant source is required to replenish evaporation. The second one uses less water, but the water needs to be demineralized and of high quality. Well, in addition, it is 100% consumed in the working process. In addition, adiabatic free cooling with evaporation in the working flow is not as effective as a cooling tower.
In terms of impact on the planet, such cooling systems are more a blessing than a curse. They increase atmospheric humidity. And water is an infinite and easily accessible resource.
There is a problem. But it is not in the cooling systems, but in the laws. When a power plant is being built. There are also cooling towers, cooling and everything else. But it is an industrial facility. And there are environmental standards and all that. power plants and other industrial facilities have their own water treatment systems.
And data centers are not industrial facilities, although they do have industrial consumption of the same water. But nothing prevents their owners from connecting to the water supply and pumping gigantic (by water supply standards) volumes from there. The problem is in the laws, not in the cooling.
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I went straight to the horses mouth on this one and asked ChatGPT how much water it uses for each query – 100ml
I’ve actually wondered this too! AI doesn’t consume water in the traditional sense, obviously, since it’s all software and data running on servers. But I think the physical hardware that AI relies on—like the servers themselves—do need water for cooling. I used to work at a tech company, and we had a data center that used water cooling systems to keep the servers from overheating. It’s crazy to think that while the AI is doing its thing, the machines it runs on are literally using water to stay alive. So, in a roundabout way, I guess AI could indirectly be using water, even though it doesn’t drink or “consume” it like we do.
What is even more crazy is the power to run all the email servers on the planet is more than the output of 50 nuclear powerplants.
They generally don’t use closed loop because those are massively more energy intensive than those that employ open loop (open to atmosphere cooling towers) which leverage evaporative cooling. The water is evaporated into the atmosphere where it then re-enters the water cycle.
If we were being more precise about what’s being wasted, it’s the energy used to treat and supply the water, because the water isn’t rendered unusable or locked away. It is however used in such large quantities that it may strain local treatment plant’s ability to supply them and local usage.
No, it can’t. Refer to the water cycle.
This is why the oligarchs want Greenland
You’re right, it doesn’t consume water.
See, here is my problem with this.
There are a lot of people in the US who live in a desert. And that is cool. And for them, water is a very important thing.
But many of us do not live in a desert.
The problem we have in some areas with water is when we have way, way too much of it and it destroys our homes and businesses.
A data center in say, Ohio could use a bunch of water, and as long as it’s surface water, that’s OK. As long as it doesn’t get polluted, who cares.
Yes, we need to be careful about how much ground water we use, and we have to be careful about how polluted we make the water, but… the constrictions on water use are not universal and I am sick and fucking tired of the damned assholes who farm in a goddamn desert trying to shake the people who live in a temperate rain area about water use. Your business does a lot better when you mind yours instead of other people’s. Want to use a lot of water? Move the fuck out of the desert. Not rocket science.
You’re only talking about first order effects. A rack in a data center does not consume water. The facility, power generation, manufacturing processes, transportation, are all things that do consume water among other resources.
Hydro electric or nuclear power do require water, and do use it up (at different rates, of course)
Yes but mine prefers coke