19 hours ago7 points(+0/-0/+7Score on mirror)1 child
You may have been misled. They hardly use any, actually.
xAI at its peak consumption is expected to use about 3B gallons of water per year.
The USA withdraws about 120T gallons of water per year. Thus, the data center utilizes about 0.0025% of total water withdrawals per year.
It's peanuts.
These data centers are not using too much water. That's all noise from radical groups who are being misled. It's this generation's new "climate change". It's false.
Stop falling for being radicalized against progress.
17 hours ago2 points(+0/-0/+2Score on mirror)1 child
I heard the electrons gotta drink water so they don't turn to positrons inside the flux capacitors which contain the data bits.
It's a scary thought, since positrons are anti-matter, which annihilates when it meets regular matter, so in effect these data centers are literally ticking time bombs.
The problem with data centers, as with much of what we do today, is poor planning and rampant capitalism. They belong in already urbanized areas, where the infrastructure exists. Instead, like warehousing, they're being slapped down where land is "cheap" which is usually rural farmland and small communities.
Office Apps and email and cloud storage were never a problem. The widespread plague of data centers didn't become an issue until AI entered the scene, which has nothing to do with saving paper.
that's the real kicker here