this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Fuck AI

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[–] threeduck@aussie.zone 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I hope you're all morally consistent and don't eat beef, which requires 15,000 litres of fresh water per kilo.

threeduck, you should stop eating beef.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

For all the harm that this current AI craze has caused with its excessive power usage, I don’t get how water usage is a thing. I’ve been in many data centers with water cooled systems and they were all closed loop systems. The water was a heat transport mechanism. The weren’t using fresh water to gather the heat and then just dumping it on the ground. So how is this a problem?

[–] Master@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

They pump it out of aquifers then when done it goes down the drain to be processed and inevitably evaporated. The problem is we are pumping it out faster than it can naturally the aquifers. This causes long term environmental damage and at some point the aquifer will fail and no longer regenerate.

Welcome to the water wars.

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Many of the AI/LLM focused DCs are using open loop systems. It's stupid as fuck but, it's cheap (as a large corporation).

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah I’ve been reading up on this and it’s just stupidly wasteful.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Relatively easy, but expensive, problem to solve. We have all the salt water you need. Build nuclear plants and desalinate.

Stop allowing them to use the Colorado River.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago

seawater is not all saltwater, its a bunch of other chemicals in it too.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I'm pretty sure desalinization doesn't scale. The salt needs to go somewhere.

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

we can use them for some sort of project like building a pyramid out of salt, and it will become the perfect venue to host league of legends tournaments.

[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

I feel like those tournaments usually have more salt than they can handle already...

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And it takes a lot of energy

which may not be an issue since companies running AI stuff are planning to deploy civilian mini nuclear reactors around the country

[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Why not just put it back in the fucking ocean?

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're taking salt from a large volume and putting it in a small area all at once. It kills the fish

I guess if the plan was to sprinkle the salt over miles and miles of ocean, that could work. But that's ridiculous to implement.

[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Well yeah I imagine airplanes would be used

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Take a bunch of salty water

Remove most of the water for other purposes

You now have to dispose of the same amount of salt, but less water. It's hypersalinated, and toxic as fuck.

[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes but rain fall would mitigate this would it not?

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Fuck. Maybe we could just eat the salt...

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

it scales fine (roughly linear at large scale), people just don't want to pay the energy cost because they think farms need cheap water.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (5 children)
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[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Sparking concerns. A-ha. Right. I could have asked why this shit is not banned for this reason alone, but sadly I know the answer

[–] FuckFascism@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm no expert by any means but why not just filter the salt out of fucking sea water?

[–] raid_dad@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Because it’s expensive to do that at scale. I’m sure we’ll get to a point where it’s necessary to do that, but the capitalist machine doesn’t want to “waste money” on that.

Capitalism is a fucking disease.

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[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The real shortage is the shortage of usable energy.
Entropy is what makes you able to use energy, but also what makes you lose energy.

[–] ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Had to check image was not AI

[–] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Don’t worry, I’ll stop using my swamp cooler this summer

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)
[–] FreeWilliam@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 days ago (3 children)

No, they don't consume. Instead, they use it for cooling their servers. You might have heard of a way to cool a computer that is more effective than a fan called water cooling. It basically uses water to absorb the hot air from the GPU/CPU to be sent to the radiator where the water is cooled and sent back to be pumped and continue the cycle. This is called a closed-loop water cooling system. These big "AI" databases are also using water to cool the components like how they're being used in the computer, but unlike the example, it's not a closed-loop water cooling system, meaning that instead of the water being reused, it instead gets evaporated and participates in the water cycle. The problem with this is that water used in these open-loop systems is evaporated, meaning it is remove from the local water cycles, making fresh water less accessible in areas that already face shortages, so while the amount of fresh water on Earth stays the same, it becomes inaccessible to the people, which leads to the current situation where more than a billion people don't have enough access to fresh water while big "AI" databases are using over 100 million liters daily. This is only one of the alarming consequences of "AI". This however could be easily fixed by using a closed-loop water cooling systems that use renuable energy sources for the energy required to pump and cool the system. However, sadly, in our current capitalist society, the rich are too greedy and corrupt to save lives and actually help the people.

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[–] Goose@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

https://tube.blahaj.zone/w/qEcczobJGVGmBe2rbWJkMN

There is air cooled water chillers and water cooled water chillers. Depending on what the companies go with they could have water cooled chillers causing the water loss. Air cooled chillers don't really have that problem because they don't have the same cooling situation. I attached a video of a water cooled chiller

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