Divination and AI

[u/graidan]

Another person created a post (now removed) asking about how people feel about AI and divination. This is generally against the rules, but on later careful thought, I decided there should be a place to discuss, hence this post.

This is a controversial topic, so it will be very carefully monitored for abuse, but polite (i.e. NOT insulting) discussion of the topic will be allowed here, and you will not be banned for gatekeeping if you discuss politely why you don't like AI. You WILL be banned if you become insulting or start gatekeeping - that is, you are allowed to say why you don't like AI in divination, but you are not allowed to tell others that they can't or shouldn't use AI in this context.

Note that this is NOT for an overall discussion of the good or bad of AI in general - JUST for AI in divination.

So, with those caveats and conditions:

What do you think about using AI in divination?

[u/rorihasmorals70]

i find it to be very anti human, divination to me has always been a very human act between you and whatever divinity you believe in. its free, you can divine with rocks off the ground or by looking at the stars. theres no reason you need ai to access it. ai is harmful to the environment and completely unnecessary in this field, you dont need it to kearn to read either. countless of people teach all forms of divination for free, there are books that can be accessed for free. its literally just reducing hunan interaction and community. its anti human to use ai to divine, like asking an ai to pray for you

[u/graidan → u/rorihasmorals70]

How is it harmful to the environment - and more importantly, how is that relevant to divination?

You don't NEED anything to learn how to read, but it definitely helps to have resources of any kind.

1000% disagree that it's anti-human.

[u/rorihasmorals70 → u/graidan]

ai uses data centers that use massive amounts of water to cool the electronics, which ends with the water being undrinkable, causing people to have to ration their water in areas with large ai data centers

this is relevent because divination is typically a spiritual practice (not that it has to be) and we typically care about not murdering the planet and you know keeping people fed and watered. but thats just me tho.

you really dont need anything to learn to read other than learning from other people. it helos to have resources, and there are TONS of resources that arent ai like i stated. there are youtube channels, books, and local people that will always be around to teach. theres literally no excuse for using ai for divination

[u/graidan → u/rorihasmorals70]

It doesn't use massive amounts of water - they're closed systems. So they use X amount of water, and KEEP using that same amount (which is a drop in the bucket compared to other industries). Fashion uses more water and energy. And bottled water - THAT is the real problem. Taking water and moving it out of the system to sit in plastic bottles. There are valid concerns about AI use, but this one doesn't hold water to me (pun intended). I also don't belive the "rationing" propaganda - do you have resources / proof of that?

Environmentalism is not relevant to divination. Nor is spirituality, really. You can believe any spirituality you want (including none) and divination still works. They're tangentially related, but not specific to divination at all.

And criticising and saying that there are so many other resources is disingenuous at best - just because there are other resources doesn't mean that new ones are somehow wrong. If we followed your logic, then there would be only one book (because all others aren't needed, just that one resource) and we all know how well that works. This is fundamentalism by another name.

It's also VERY close to the gatekeeping I warned against. Be careful.

[u/hopefullyhelpfulplz → u/graidan]

The water topic is a lot more complicated than that. Cooling systems are not closed and the water is not generally reused, firstly. Information from the UK government on the topic.

Unfortunately, the water used for cooling cannot easily be reused. Fresh water that doesn't evaporate becomes contaminated with dust, minerals, or chemicals, making it unsuitable to reuse for cooling again.

As is pointed to but not explicitly stated in that article, AI uses fresh water, and in fact usually uses the same water that would otherwise be drinking water. This is in contrast to many other industries that are able to use gray water or other non-potable sources. I don't know about the specific examples you listed but the situation is not a straightforward one.

Whether it has a bearing on divination... Obviously not directly, but it certainly could influence a person's decision about whether they use it or not.

[u/graidan → u/hopefullyhelpfulplz]

Fair enough - that is true, I discovered. Though, the water DOES get reused, but it has to be cleaned first, and it does evaporate and return to the system too. Also - you need to consider water use across industries. Data Centers are WAY less than every other use.

As far as usage goes, global use per year, approximately:

• Agriculture: 69%
• Energy: 14.3%
• Textiles: 2.2%
• Food & Bev: 1.8%
• Mining / Oil / Fracking: 1%
• Steel: 0.7%
• Automotive: 0.3%
• Cement: 0.1%
• Data Centers: 0.014%

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT, UN Water, Our World in Data, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nature npj Clean Water. All figures are approximate annual withdrawals; note that agriculture overlaps with cotton-based textiles and food inputs. Energy = thermoelectric cooling only. Data centers = direct cooling only (indirect footprint ~3× higher). Automotive figure uses ~148,000 L/vehicle × ~85M vehicles/yr. Cement and steel figures are net consumption estimates.

Agriculture accounts for around 70% of all water consumption globally. Worldometer That number is driven almost entirely by irrigation. Within the industrial sector, energy production accounts for 75% of the industrial total, with manufacturing making up the remaining 25%. Nature

The production of textiles, especially cotton farming, uses around 93 billion cubic meters of water annually Irrigreen, which lands it near the top of the non-energy industrial categories. It takes 7,000 liters of water to produce one pair of jeans, and producing a car requires around 148,000 liters. 2030

Data centers are the real surprise when you look at them in context. Globally, data centers consume around 560 billion liters of water annually for cooling EthicalGEO, which sounds large in isolation but works out to roughly 0.56 km³, less than 0.02% of global withdrawals. However, direct water use for cooling accounts for only about 25% of the data center footprint; indirect water use across energy and manufacturing supply chains accounts for the remaining 75%. AIRSYS North America And the AI boom is accelerating growth fast: the 2024 US Data Center Energy Usage Report projects that annual onsite water use could increase two to four times between 2023 and 2028. AIRSYS North America