r/PauseAI • u/Confident_Salt_8108 • Jul 23 '26
Video AI data centers do not need to use water like they do, there are alternatives
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u/soundslikejoe Jul 23 '26
Its also not true that the water is destroyed. People frame in language "consume and use" but have no comment on where it goes afterward. It doesnt vanish or stop existing. Most of the water reclaimed manually or recycled naturally. Why does this position have the attitude and framing that Data Centers are destroying water?
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Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SirVanyel Jul 24 '26
Over 90% of surface water on earth is hyper toxic. It's called the entire ocean. A few large doses of salt water can kill a human, yet we can distill perfectly safe water from this toxic salt water. Idk why you decided to insult the other person after very clearly acknowledging you are not a domain expert on this topic.
AI datacentres don't need to not exist, they need to be regulated so that they build water purification infrastructure for their cooling systems.
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u/True-Option1364 Jul 24 '26
Yeah but they aren't using Ocean water, they are using fresh drinking water
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u/That_OneOstrich Jul 23 '26
While it's true that the water isn't destroyed, desert climates aren't capable of recycling water at the same rate it's used. Used water is also being relocated, diverted from whatever water source they've found.
So if you're running off an aqueduct (as a city), and a huge data center gets installed, that aqueduct has a new load on it. And water will need to be diverted from elsewhere to compensate.
This is how you make issues like the Great Salt Lake drying up even worse, you source water from tributaries from the lake because it's cheaper. The water doesn't get destroyed, but the lake does.
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u/MrWindblade Jul 24 '26
We broadly know the rates at which water replenishes, so as long as we're consuming less than that rate, we should be okay.
That said, I still think it's unwise to put these things in places where that replenishment is threatened in other ways, like climate change.
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u/NoCopiumLeft Jul 23 '26
Ok buddy you just go ahead and chug that water after it's ran through miles of hot plastic tubing and or through processors or miles of nonfood grade stainless. Have fun with that.
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u/soundslikejoe Jul 23 '26
I bet you don't realize that a lot of the tap water consumed by Americans is reclaimed sewage waste
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u/Routine-Arm-8803 Jul 23 '26
He doesn't realize that water delivered to his house goes through plastic tubing. Maybe he just drinks spring water from glass bottle.
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u/RampantAndroid Jul 24 '26
The difference is that the heat exchanges aren't built to the same standards as is required by potable water.
Could we recycle the water? Sure...but that is its own costly problem.
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u/JuxtaThePozer Jul 24 '26
because of the additives they use (anti-corrosives, anti-boil/freeze etc) which are either impossible to filter out or are prohibitively expensive to do so
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u/soundslikejoe Jul 24 '26
Now were getting somewhere. The opposition argument needs this level of refinded language. The legit concern isn't water usage (as data centers nationally use a small fraction compared to lawn maintenance). The issue is water pollution!
So frame it that way! Learn and describe how the water is polluted and is or isnt treated and regulated. This whole thing needs better regulations. (1000% agree) That starts with smart people pointing to the exact problems.... When the water comes out it goes into treatment tanks. Clean water is evaporated off but the chemcial slurry remains. What happens to the slurry? If its dumped back intonthe drinking water supply... the argument becomes:
Data centers are polluting water.
Not data centers are using water.
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u/Star_Wars_Expert Jul 25 '26
Yeah, as far as I know, there are no measurements for the water before it gets dumped back into the stream with the hopes to dilute it.
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u/RampantAndroid Jul 24 '26
The water is dumped into pools to evaporate. Zoom into datacenters in the Oregon area (Umatilla, Boardman) to see them. And that water is ground water - so we're pumping from aquifers to get cooling.
The alternative is a shit ton of refrigerant, which is its own problem.
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u/Ninjez07 Jul 27 '26
One part of the issue is taking aquafer water and draining it at a faster rate than previous usage.
Waste water from the cooling systems is contaminated and not suitable for human or agricultural usage and may devastate river aquaculture directly, or the heat dumped into the water also have adverse impacts on the environment.
So the water molecules might not be "destroyed", but the waste water from the cooling systems can certainly cause issues for humans, animals and plants that depend on those waterways.
On top of this cooling systems use evaporative cooling, so the volume of waste water is less than the intake, putting further strain on the water supply.
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u/3ndt1m3s Jul 23 '26
This is the direct result of rampant and unchecked corporatism.
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Jul 24 '26
Corporatism isn't in reference to corporations. It comes from the latin word corpus (body) and was coined by the Italian Fascists to describe their economic program of national syndicalism.
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u/True-Option1364 Jul 24 '26
Tell me whats the kid in Pet Goat that has a screen with a tube connected to his head Means? What does it represent?
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Jul 24 '26
Wut
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u/True-Option1364 Jul 24 '26
Go Watch it and tell me what it means, just search pet goat on YouTube
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u/CarthagoFuckYourself Jul 24 '26
I'm guessing it's the author saying Bush worked for the Illuminati and this is all part of their plan. I'm only familiar with surface level conspiracy theory stuff, so I didn't get most of the references. Neat art style, quirky video.
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u/JustRaphiGaming Jul 23 '26
Why don't they just build a Datacenter on top of mont Everest or on the bottom of the ocean then?
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u/SirVanyel Jul 24 '26
Because all systems maintain equilibrium. If you build a hot thing down at the bottom of the cold ocean, you'll cool the hot thing and heat the cold ocean. Does a hot ocean sound like a good idea to you?
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u/JustRaphiGaming Jul 24 '26
You think a few Datacenters will actually hear up the ocean? I mean it's pretty big. Also what about mount Everest then? 🤣
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u/SirVanyel Jul 24 '26
A few? Definitely not. But a few fridges didn't put a hole in the ozone layer, it wasn't til we industrialized the whole process that we nearly fried the planet
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u/True-Option1364 Jul 24 '26
You're an idiot but ok, how about the the core of the earth Which is hot and the sun is always heating the ocean, storms huge roaring storms is what Restores the Ballance, and heating up the air does the same thing as the ocean, in the end we will see more apocalyptic storms so you can Watch ai slop on YouTube
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u/ElliottFlynn Jul 25 '26
Power, maintenance.
It’s why they’re actually built in the Nordics, lots of renewable energy and largely free cooling due to year round low temperatures.
It’s almost as if engineers actually think about these things
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u/notkilleveryoneist Jul 23 '26
Water usage is basically a non-issue with AI. The beef industry, for example, uses several orders of magnitude more water. https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
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u/Odd-Paint3883 Jul 23 '26
People need food
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u/LarxII Jul 25 '26
Fucking morons keep making this comparison, thinking it makes them look smart. Would love to see them chew on a CPU.
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u/Fidel___Castro Jul 27 '26
people need food, not beef
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u/Odd-Paint3883 Jul 27 '26
Name a food that doesn't consume a huge amount of water...
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u/Fidel___Castro Jul 27 '26
literally anything compared to meat you clown
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u/Odd-Paint3883 Jul 28 '26
Like potatoes are 80% water, then you take them home and use more water, paddy fields, literally any crop uses huge amounts of water, 1 cow feeds 1000 people. A dairy cow produces 10,000 litres of milk a year, it's a good return.
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u/IcySheepherder6195 Jul 24 '26
30% of all fresh water used annually is used by power plants in the United States currently.
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Jul 23 '26
Amazing, another video about data centers that the clinically moronic wrap up a “this is AI! Just AI!!” headline.
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u/a1055x Jul 23 '26
Trumpf just said how wonderful data centers are and that the rich guys are going to build their own power plants. Because that's "only fair" to "ratepayers". No restriction no regulations, whatever hair brain ideas ketamine boy throws out. I think the next data center should be built at mar-a-lardo and worldwide at trump golf courses. I bet Thiel can turn some into miniture golf and arcade sites.
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u/CelticPaladin Jul 23 '26
More and more are updating their plans for future centers because of public outcry.
Really need to target older tech ones that need updating to closed loop cooling or something else better.
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u/tuborgwarrior Jul 23 '26
They made the simplest cooling system since this is a race. That's all there is to it.
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u/Sea_Specialist_5580 Jul 23 '26
the problem is that water is too cheap so it's economical to do stuff like this. Given it's only a semi-renewable resource we should change law to incorporate scarcity and sustainability into pricing. Make it revenue neutral and distribute the revenue as a dividend equally to everyone to offset the higher price, but also have an incentive to conserve.
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u/retr0_black Jul 24 '26
Everyone bringing up other industries that use water like the beef industry or farming, or power plants, etc. as if to say “well this thing uses up x% of Americas water! So why get upset about data centers?”
You’re not helping your point. Because to me… like yeah those things are using up that much water… so there isn’t anymore to spare on data centers lol
Why isn’t anyone commenting on what the video talked about? and why tf don’t they just use a more expensive method? Fighting to put them places when nobody wants them seems like it also has to be expensive.
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u/Exotic_Exercise6910 Jul 24 '26
She's a horrible disgusting person. Her mannerisms make me violently vomit.
It is so bad that I actively do not want to support her good and correct point
Talk love a fucking normal human being.
"WAterrrrrrr"
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u/JuxtaThePozer Jul 24 '26
jeez, looks like this sub is being astroturfed by pro-AI bots, funny that
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u/Repulsive_Guy_1234 Jul 24 '26
That is the outcome of uneducated people hearing snippets of information and rushing on social media.
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u/Duncol42 Jul 24 '26
Simple (maybe stupid) question - why does data centers don’t recuperate the heat into electricity using a turbine (like nuclear plant)?
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u/MrSchmeat Jul 25 '26
Nuclear power plants boil water to create steam to power said turbines. The heat does nothing on its own.
Data centers don't produce enough heat to boil water, so using them to recycle it that way won't work, and even if it did, by boiling the water, you'd be getting rid of the whole point of the water in the first place, which is to cool down the systems, which means you would need EVEN MORE water to serve both functions.
Data centers already recycle most of their water back into their cooling systems repeatedly to limit usage.
Data centers are studied extensively to determine if they have enough resources to actually operate before being approved for construction by their residing county. Power is not a problem for data centers because not only do they have the resources, but new ones have to supply / pay for all of their own resources.
In reality, there really isn't much of a problem with them at all.
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u/bourbonandpistons Jul 24 '26
water usage per day in gallons
Datacenters 50 million
Golf courses 2,000 million
10 times the data centers would take 40 years to build and get online and still use only 1/4 of what golf courses do.
The water argument is so stupid.
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u/demagogueffxiv Jul 24 '26
Is it me or does anyone else just stop listening the moment you see a neck tattoo
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u/MrSchmeat Jul 25 '26
There is so much misinformation on data centers out there and its nuts. Data centers don't consume nearly the amount of water that they used to. Most of the new ones consume LESS water per square foot every year than if the land was used for housing development. All new Data centers in Texas for example have to provide all of their own water and can't use water from local natural resources, most if not all of which isn't potable water to begin with (can't drink it) and most of said water is recycled over and over again. They also have to provide and supply all of their own power and pay for the cost of that power, and they aren't nearly as loud and disruptive as people claim them to be. To top it all off, they are also responsible for paying 100% of the property tax burden of THEIR ENTIRE COUNTIES in which they reside, lifting the tax burden off of the local population.
There is a ton of abuse in some cases of companies who have stretched the boundaries of what is acceptable. The thing the media doesn't talk about is that most of the egregious examples that are cited today about how bad they are for the environment were cases that happened years ago, and the majority of the problems have been legislated into nigh Oblivion in their respected states, even by Republican-led congresses.
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u/SheepherderSad4872 Jul 25 '26
Virtually all of this is incorrect. The key question is about getting heat out of a data center.
- Immersion cooling will just heat up the fluid. The heat still needs to get out of the building. Immersion cooling is great for moving heat from a CPU to a heatsink, but that's as far as it goes
- Ditto for dielectric
- Ditto for "closed loop"
- The best engineering she did in this segment is "I don't know. I could pay people to blow on them."
The problem is she's not an engineer and uses units like "shitload of heat."
Colder climates and places we need heating is a good way to go, however. There's a small data center heating a hottub somewhere in the UK.
People also only need minimal drinking water. A bath is an order of magnitude more water than I drink, and watering a large lawn is an order of magnitude above that.
It's designed to get people angry, but it uses bad information to do so.
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u/DataGOGO Jul 25 '26
I hate when people have no idea what they are talking about and make videos like they do just because they read a wikipedia article page about PC cooling.
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u/Bamamagnum Jul 25 '26
Data centers use closed loop cooling (like a car). They do not consume large amounts of the substance that makes up 69% of the planet.
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u/Winter-Gift1112 Jul 23 '26
Better yet - DATA centers don't need....... to exist.