r/antiai • u/Haaddley • 15h ago
Environmental Impact đ Imagine running out of water just to keep generating AI slop
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15h ago
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u/Glitchboi3000 15h ago
When and if they run out of fresh water (if for some reason the bubble doesn't pop) they'll just start building massive desalination plants for themselves to use. All that excess salt and other minerals? Dumped in random places without a care. All in the name of shit that doesn't even produce profits for the companies.
I find it funny how all the aspects of the infinite growth part of late stage capalism all of a sudden got tossed out of the window with LLM companies (there's nothing intelligent about current "AI").
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u/netorarekindacool 15h ago
Bro your Comment just summed the meme up. R u a bot or having a stroke?
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u/WalrusWithAKeyboard 14h ago
So, less than the amount the US uses to water golf courses. Are you being as dramatic over anti-golf sentiments?
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u/eltorr007 15h ago
Man, these AI data centers need to be shut. Are governments BLIND!!
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u/Star_ofthe_Morning 15h ago
No, theyâre just old, stupid and rich
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u/Charming-Crescendo 15h ago
For real.
There was an interview with as U.S. Representative aired this year where he basically said that he didn't know what ChatGPT was until a week ago.
These people don't watch the news or interact with the human world. They live in the dark and get their information from consultants and lobbyists telling them what they should rubber-stamp.
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u/itsDYA 12h ago
in what world would they not know what chatgpt is? when ai is driving a massive change economically, it is not like it is a tiktok trend
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u/Charming-Crescendo 10h ago
Like I said, in a world where the only information you get is from consulting firms and lobbying groups telling you what bills to sign because "it's for the good of the country and investment and blah blah blah."
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u/MadeByTango 12h ago
These data centers arent being built for images. They're being built for surveillance pricing, warrantless flocking, and market manipulation. They will power all of the drones and robots they are rapidly building about to drop on the country, Attack of the Clones style, to "protect us." They'll be under the purview of the "space force", which will conveniently allow them to operate outside of all known international law by claiming the processes are happening of the planet. Cant break laws in space!
And its not one man or administration. Its the global oligarchy we're all being played by, party vs party, country vs country, so we'll fight each other instead of share this pale blue dot. Because sharing doesnt let rich men pay everyone else to wipe their ass or risk starvation.
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u/SpaceDelay424 10h ago
Never going to happen unless thereâs genuine resistance. Billionaire oligarchs control the government and thatâs not going to change without direct action.
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u/AvailableReason6278 15h ago
Future historians...? Bold of you to assume they will have an earth to live in.
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u/Thepersonwhoasked_69 5h ago
Not to say that the pessimism is unfounded (I would not consider myself hopeful in the current political climate, for one), but this is such a terrible mindset to push if you are against AI. Because then, what even is the reason to try and do something useful if the earth is supposedly bound to explode by the moment future historians appear?
That exact inaction and apathy is what got us here, please, for the love of god, donât let it lead us into the second layer of the shithole weâre in, where we will continue complaining about âwhy didnât we do anything while we couldâ
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u/AvailableReason6278 2h ago
You are correct, but a lot of the climate change is because of big companies. I don't really get a say in that. Im quite technical so all i can do is try to use/install or come up with eco-friendly technologies. Of course i could also join a parade and scream how our earth is dying but i don't really see it leading to any results to be honest.
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u/bowsmountainer 15h ago
The way things are going, there wont be any future historians.
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u/leopargodhi 14h ago
each of the bunker dynasties will have its own, and we will not be in any of them
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u/bowsmountainer 13h ago
Oh you mean the "historians" who will teach the descendents the totally true story of how genius god Kings Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman and co. Saved the world by setting the cleansing angels of AI down on the evil humans who demanded too much from the rightly elected overlords, like the desire to not starve to death? How they turned the awful and inefficient forests and rivers into beautiful data centers and toxic waste to free the blessed bunker children?
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u/hmm4468 15h ago
This is 0.02% of water intake in the US.
Also, itâs not even the right number, the 264 billion came from this Deloitte paper on semi conductor industry
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u/oconnor663 12h ago
blatantly incorrect claim about [unpopular topic]
correction
"Why would you defend [unpopular topic]?
Is basically the core game loop of social media.
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u/District-No1350 12h ago
Big numbers with zero context are useful for manipulating idiots. Of all the things wrong with ai people focus on the entire industry using less than a sixth of the water California uses to grow fancy nuts.
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u/cewillir 15h ago
There does seem to be a âMordor intelligenceâ source for the number
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u/hmm4468 15h ago
The Mordor number is close but not 264, so I donât know where that came from other than the Deloitte report or bad math, in any event it takes away from the credibility of the statement.
In any event, itâs ridiculous framing with dodgy accuracy, it does a disservice to the argument.
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u/Party-Trainer3455 10h ago
Misinformation? On reddit? Why would someone go on the internet and lie?
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u/-Feeblington- 15h ago
You peeps remember the days when new tech came out and we could see real things done with it and built for purpose.
Who let dr jekyll of the ai dept out. This is all gone to far already
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u/Murky-Relation481 9h ago
I mean I am a senior software engineer with 25 years of experience. I am also a multidisciplinary systems engineer on top of that. There is real value in these models. They're not perfect, they're probably reaching a point of severely diminishing returns in terms of tech, but to pretend real things are not being done with it is just ignoring that the vast majority of AI usage is for actual work.
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u/Salerrra 15h ago edited 15h ago
Someone did the math a bit ago about how much processing it takes to pump out the amount of AI slop we're seeing. The startling thing is that it's a waaaay smaller percentage than one would think.
So what's the rest of this AI processing power going toward? The non-public models. Those being trained behind closed doors, and those handling huge amounts of data needing to be ingested and processed for companies like Palantir.
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u/12345623567 14h ago
This is also the reason the AI bubble won't pop too soon. Cat videos are only the iceberg and a loss-leader, AI companies want to sell directly to companies and governments.
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u/Salerrra 13h ago
That's my fear as well. If the bubble survives long enough, it won't have any more fear of popping b/c it's directly integrated with companies and governments to a degree that it'll get a bailout one way or another. Both are replacing people as consumer targets
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u/Fun-Amoeba8015 14h ago
I'm so tired of the internet not being able to do basic fact checking or understand systems whatsoever.Â
First, what is the unit here? Is it per month per year per 5 years per 10 years without some sort of unit? It's completely meaningless we don't know.Â
But I'll tell you what they are. The figure is not exactly right, but it's close enough to about one year.Â
Okay so do any of you understand what a billion gallons means relative to the total US Municipal water System? Because is that 90%? Is it 1%? Is it 0.1%? Do you know?
Here are the actual facts:
The 264 billion number was a viral post that came from a study that was literally all of digital infrastructure in a GLOBAL scale including municipal and non-municipal and has nothing to do with AI. It's literally all digital infrastructure and the number was per year and the scale was global... so we can get that aside.Â
Actual projected AI infrastructure for 2028 is projected to use around like 30 to 35 billion gallons. Which equates to about 0. 23%
The total yearly USÂ Municipal water usage is between 13 and 14 trillion gallons per year.Â
15% of municipal water loss is literally just from leakage.
No yes AI data centers can be concentrated. So yes they can increase load on a local level and that should be definitely discussed and regulated against to protect local populations. Also like anything that has some sort of resource use whether it be energy or water or impact. We should be discussing regulation and long-term sustainability. I don't disagree with any of this.Â
But AI is not a leading factor in using water either on a us or global scale. The data is easy to find. It's very accessible and it's very easy to understand total numbers and percents and relative impact and relative use. AI is not using that much and it is off by orders of magnitude from the actual industries and sectors that are truly using up our water or creating any sort of unsustainable infrastructure.Â
If you want to be taken seriously, then do 5 minutes of research. Look at the actual totals involved and then the relative percents of every single industry and sector and subsector.Â
Then we can have an actual informed discussion about pros and cons and regulation and sustainability and environment.Â
But just posting viral Twitter post that are completely misrepresented is not helping your argument and in fact is undercutting your credibility.
Â
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u/Pjoo 13h ago
There are real issues with AI, like electricity if looking at resource usage. The water usage is completely made up problem that only helps to mask and discredit any valid criticism.
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u/Ektari 12h ago
Not a completely made up problem, but moreso the problem is blown out of proportion to the real issues like electricity and air/noise pollution. In areas where water scarcity is an issue it does pose an actual problem.
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u/madshine 8h ago
Reddit users are incredibly anti-AI, don't won't use their brains when they see something about AI. AI is evil bad and the all servers should shut down. They can't see that there no way back. So many visionaries.Â
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u/RetroSleipnir 15h ago edited 15h ago
This is why AI isn't just a flawed creation device but a danger to human life. Moving to local AI could theoretically reduce damage, but that would undermine image generation quality. But they don't care, it's all just a big game, they train their AI off artist who didn't consent and then talk about "breaking the pencil" when pencils created everything they used to train their AI.
You could train an AI off of Public Domain Data, a lot of artist use work in the Public Domain in their own, problem is they want to act like stuck up kids then serious adults.
Edit: and definitely not serious artist.
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u/crani0 13h ago
 local AIÂ
Back in my days we called those "computer programs".
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u/avrgwarthunderplayer 12h ago
This specifically is not why, that much water sounds like a lot but is almost nothing compared to anything else. Actual issues are power use and the fact everything online is just ai now.
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u/Disastrous-Hearing72 11h ago edited 3h ago
You're talking about AI like all it does is make content slop. AI is incredibly powerful for software, engineering, and medicine. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Also lawns consume 10x the amount of water datacenters do and have been for decades, and no one batted an eye. Lawns are arguably more pointless and damaging to the ecosystem than datacenters. I rarely see anyone loosing their shit over lawns. Infact a lot of these people crying about AI using water and energy most likely mow their lawn every week, wasting both.
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u/Bamfurlough 14h ago
Golf courses consume about 750 billion gallons of water a year. I'm more concerned about power consumption and rising electricity rates.
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u/crani0 13h ago
Golf courses consume about 750 billion gallons of water a year
They are both terrible, especially when you account for them together. And AI is also pumping cancer causing chemicals into the water.
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u/nhalliday 13h ago
Yet people don't seem to really care about how bad golf courses are, while everyone talks about how terrible AI is. Maybe all that people really care about is that AI can steal their jobs and golf courses can't.
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u/WhattaCheapPop 13h ago
Every single thread on this topic has some goofball going "wHaT aBoUt GoLf CoUrSeS?!".
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u/ZeroAmusement 12h ago
If water is as big as a problem as it is made out to be, then '"wHaT aBoUt GoLf CoUrSeS?!" is a logical question to ask.
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u/LosinCash 12h ago
Because it's a fair argument. If we eliminate one thing that is consuming water unnecessarily, then we should also eliminate the other(s).
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u/Oxidatiion 12h ago
AI is also pumping cancer causing chemicals into the water.
What type of claim is this? Sources please.
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u/Lurking_Hyperdriver 15h ago
The people who can do anything about it will be dead and rich while you suffer
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u/Active_Arachnid1088 14h ago
Itâs funny because NO ONE WANTS AI, except for the top 1% of people who are building it anyways and we canât stop it.
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u/avrgwarthunderplayer 12h ago
Loads of people use and like it. Its why it has so much money put into it, because of the hope with this many people using it that it will make a profit soon. It has issues that need to be fixed (power usage, straight up lies, probably removal of ai image gen because it seems to only be used for bot accounts to post lies) but with those fixed it would be quite good.
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u/SPQR_191 11h ago
Just gonna throw out that just about everyone in my office uses ai to some degree and we are all required to input metrics into an organization wide data base that uses ai to analyze and predict trends. I also personally use it to touch up photos on my phone, set reminders on my calendar, and look up plants I find. People are definitely using AI a ton and even the Redditors who say they hate it probably use it a lot more than they are willing to admit.
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u/Dazzu1 15h ago
Weâre gonna have future historians?
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u/Wolodymyr2 14h ago
Yes. Regardless of what will happen with planet, humanity is now advanced enough to survive this and then rebuild.
And there aren't going to be some stuff that we cannot survive, like planet blowing up.
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u/FearlessLettuce1697 14h ago
One pound of beef produces about 27 kg of COâe and has a total water footprint of about 7,000 liters. A year of 10 typical LLM prompts a day uses only about 1.1 kWh of electricity; estimates of its water footprint vary widely, but are far below 7,000 liters.
U.S. data centers directly consumed about 66 billion liters of water in 2023. U.S. beef production uses roughly 18 trillion liters of blue water per year. So data centers used less than 0.4% as much direct water as beef production.
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u/Bombalurina 14h ago
For context, that is also 1.2% of what cattle uses which is 21 trillion gallons a year.
I know it's a popular AI-pro talking point, but there are way better arguments like power consumption and government corruption in small towns. More important is lack of oversight on pollution of the water used that runs off after use in their closed loop systems.
Fuck data centers, but making water consumption arguments is kinda moot.
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u/crani0 13h ago
For context, that is also 1.2% of what cattle uses which is 21 trillion gallons a year.
Bullshit. Those are self reported numbers and we know they are lying.
I know it's a popular AI-pro talking point, but there are way better arguments like power consumption and government corruption in small towns.
We can stick to the water talk and about cancer causing chemicals that these data centers are pumping into the water.
Fuck data centers, but making water consumption arguments is kinda moot.
Nope, there is plenty to talk about there. From their lies about water consumption to direct pollution of rivers. You really think local governments would be pumping water into these things if they didn't use it? Come on now
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u/myklob 10h ago edited 10h ago
Let's calm down a bit about the water.
AI Sucks because it is going to kill us. I listened to "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. You should too. I hate AI, but let's not look stupid.
Google: "how much water is used for golf courses vs data centers." You will see that golf courses consume 20 to 30 times as much water as all US data centers combined. I don't think we should have golf courses either, but let's not frame it as if data centers are going to cause us to run out of water.
Energy use, pollution, loss of democracy, and loss of local control are worse than the water, and AI alignment and loss of containment are worse than the water. Let's not use bad arguments that can make us look bad.
I don't think we need to support each other and everything each other says so much, just because it comes from the correct side. Let's have honest analysis and internal dialogue to make sure we put forth the best arguments, and not just become an echo chamber that says every anti-AI argument is equally valid, even if some of them don't hold up to analysis as well as others...
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u/No-Sandwich-8152 15h ago
Fact check. All Data Centers globally consumed that much. Not AI data centers.
Ai is maybe 20% of all that. Which is a hefty chunk.
But as soon as we start conflating figures to better suit our narrative,weâre lying.
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u/mosswick 15h ago edited 6h ago
Data centers for email and hosting web servers are one thing, those are necessities and the energy cost is worth it. Data centers for churning out billions of ugly pictures and fake videos that cost even more energy than other data centers, are not worth the cost.
Edit: Not going to bother arguing with bots, nowhere did I say "reddit is a necessity". If you think the Internet isn't a necessity, then you're not living in the year 2026.
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u/No-Sandwich-8152 15h ago
Iâm just saying the figures in this image are a lie. Thatâs all.
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u/G-M-Cyborg-313 15h ago
If you told me in a book or something people were polluting drinking water to churn out the most mindnumbing shite imaginable i would've called it unbelievable.
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u/RutgerHause 15h ago
AI is rarely correct. It just churns out nonsense and filler all day long. How can anyone buy into this? Itâs complete nonsense. I get it if itâs a bad AI art style and poor dweebs canât draw.
But for anything else. Itâs shit!
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u/wallstreetbet1 14h ago
Is there any evidence to any of the facts or numbers in this post? Would love to have data to back up my anti-AI talking pointsÂ
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u/throwaway490215 14h ago
At this point this sub is just a parody of itself where every day people work to claim the top spot with some logical fallacy.
For my own sanity i'll believe this is done by a pro-ai propaganda campaign to make the anti-ai crowd seem like morons.
Or maybe because both democrats and republicans agree not-in-my-back-yard on datacenters, that guides this sub to find the lowest common denominator.
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u/Sorry-Combination558 11h ago
2 week old account, lol
You are either just pushing an agenda not caring about if your post is true, or straight up poisoning the well to discredit this community.
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u/ToughPersonality1458 11h ago
lmao, this misinformation shit is just hurting your own cause, do you actually comprehend that?
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u/output_broadcast 11h ago
Unless they misspelled millions as billions, this makes no sense. Except if they count water required for power generation I guess, but even then, it seems high.
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u/United-Cobbler-4526 10h ago
The world we know is run by a bunch of rich idiots with the IQ of a potato. They seem to think there's another planet we can go to after this one is ruined.
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u/Prior-Razzmatazz-206 9h ago
We drained the lakes so that the president could make ai stop of himself looking like a decorated vet and pictures of the world being labeled america.
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u/CaesarsGhostReborn 15h ago
I agree. If many of the advances in medical tech and other necessities occurred from AI, Iâd be fine with some. But how much of it is really like that?
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u/Traditional_Buy_8420 15h ago
It's not that hard to explain. Evil racists elected an evil gifter and child rapist, because he promised to go hard on migrants and people who look different. The AI bubble was a huge asset in helping with the grifting.
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u/QQmorekid 15h ago
JFC people cannot be this imbecilic. STOP PUSHING BLAME FOR WHAT HUMANS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AWAY FROM HUMANS. It won't fucking kill us to take the blame for what we've been building up to for decades, but no lazy entitled 21st century humans need to blame tech for their own selfish behavior so they can feel like they don't need to do shit l. It's fucking sickening
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u/EnkiBye 15h ago
That's a bit optimistic to consider humanity will have a future at all lol
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u/Serious_Attempt9724 14h ago
You guys ever heard of the great filter hypothesis? AI is definitely one of them...
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u/Silly_Percentage3446 14h ago
This sub's making me want to die, it's too much bad news, too much of a reminder that AI exists. I'm going to leave this sub.
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u/EatTheMall-CEOFetish 14h ago
I thing generating Italian brainrots and new members of the Sahur family worth it.
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u/PlayboiFarti55 14h ago
All that because people are too lazy to just search and find the fucking knowledge. Truly bizarre how this is happening.
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u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz 14h ago
Is that annual, if so that's literally 1% of what the beef industry uses, complain about AI all you want but if you also are eating beef while doing it, you're a massive hypocrite
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u/Several_Hour_347 14h ago
I donât think data centers are related to droughts at all. They impact areas locally, but not 63% of the country or even close to it
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u/Sarcasm_Llama 14h ago
They're actually for storing the info gathered on all of us by a surveillance police state, but yeah
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u/Main_Composer 14h ago
lol thinking there will be people left that survive to write about what happened or anyone left who will be around to read it.
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u/MyModemIsSlow 14h ago
Dude, plenty of water and resources for the elite. They watched a movie and were empowered.
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u/pickle9977 14h ago
It wonât be any harder than tulips, or the south sea bubble or any of the other financial manias.
Greed and stupidity are timeless and entangled.
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u/JustOverride 14h ago
I am very much against massive AI data centers, but this meme is very misleading.
The US uses more than 300 billion gallons of water in A SINGLE DAY.
I think the power concerns are much more important and should be focused on more.
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u/Mesoposty 14h ago
We need to call the data centers what they are really for, SPY CENTERS! They want to track us and spy on everything we do. There zero community benefits to having them. They steal the local resources and our privacy.
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u/420viking024 14h ago
Future historians are going to have strokes over making a summary of the last 20 years lol
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u/PositiveCoyote100 14h ago
AI only accounts for 20% of data center energy consumption.
Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Spotify... All use an insane amount of data center energy.
But nobody wants to hear that.
YouTube alone used a shit ton of energy at data centers. Are you willing to stop using YouTube? Are you willing to stop using Google Maps? Are you willing to stop using Instagram?
Or are you just morally posturing?
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u/TheBigMoogy 14h ago
Factor in how much authoritarian propaganda those AI data centers are pumping out and it becomes very clear.
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u/the_summer_soldier 14h ago edited 14h ago
The peasants chose not the way of the French in their greatest hour of need that when ignored by the wealthy. Therefore, they suffered and many died on mass from dehydration and other maladies brought on by a lack of clean water to drink and cook with.
I think thatâs about how it would get written. Then it would go into the economic numbers and then primary source accounts of people saying things online but then not even going to vote, and accounts from water companies, park managers, the elites, etc., etc.. Edit: But then it will go on to say that residential lawn watering used waaay more water, and probably a disproportionate amount of that residential lawn water was used by the elite.
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u/seriousbangs 14h ago
Current historians know what's going on.
The Epstein class is replacing us with machines.
They hate you. They've always hated you.
They know they're dependent on you to buy their shit and make them rich, and they're taking steps to solve that problem and eliminate their dependency on you.
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u/_ThatD0ct0r_ 14h ago
Not gonna defend datacenters, but golf course water usage is a tad bit worse. And never mind the almond farms.
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u/12345623567 14h ago
I think someone did the math and datacenter water consumption is like 1% of all the water that gets wasted due to poor water management in agriculture. The biggest culprit in water waste is aging municipal infrastructure, which leaks absolutely enormous amounts in comparison.
I'm not a fan of AI either, but it's not going to be the reason we run out of drinking water.
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u/Rad131447 14h ago
to cool down the machine generating 4K AI
fruit videoschild pornography that is suddenly legal for mysterious reasons.
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u/Karacehennem 14h ago
Historians will see the bigger picture, looking back from 2226, and see high volume commercial goods production well outweighed the water consumption compared to AI Data Centers.
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u/Mammoth-Wasabi6346 14h ago
The amount of destruction it takes to offload creativity makes me admire the human vessel all the more.
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u/Apprehensive_News_78 13h ago
Your wrong. Fox News said olive orchards consume 10x more water than the data centers /s
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u/interista4jz 13h ago
They literally call it data lakes but won't put the data centers in shallow bodies of water for the cooling benefits??
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u/aqtseacow 13h ago
Oh no, the real injustice will be that it won't be everyone running out of water. It will be geographically bound, many people will be forced to relocate.
We don't all get to suffer equally.
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u/Fantastic-Salmon92 13h ago
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is using 300 billion gallons a year but sure, its the AI that used it all up....
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u/Wave-Able 13h ago
Itâs all about that shareholder value. Some old dudes donât want to die without owning a third yacht
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u/N0m4d5h4m4n_0114 13h ago
I mean, that's what El Preside- I mean Il Du- I mean Mein F- I mean Our Glorious Cha- FUCK! THAT'S WHAT THE DICTATOR'S CONSTANTLY DOING.
Anyway. I'd still say the same if another party put someone in, and they did the same. All of them are just this asinine, and would prolly sell us folk out just to make themselves look younger in a photo.
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u/Comfortable_Pack8903 13h ago
The rich people will just make like Tim Curry and go to SPACE the one place not ruined by capitalism.
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u/No_Solid_3737 13h ago
I'm all in for this data centers to be used for environmental and medical research. That is not what these AI centers are being used for, shut them all now.
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u/JoanofArc0531 13h ago
Is there actual evidence of how much water is actually being used in these AI data centers? Any videos or something rather than just an article that may or may not be true?Â
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u/axecalibur 13h ago
Fruit slop is how they sell it to the general public. Meanwhile they are using the bulk of the power to train their chatbots and software to become as close to human as possible to replace every job imaginable because why pay employees when a computer/robot can work 24/7 without complaint/healthcare/breaks.
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u/hewhoisgomez 13h ago
Although a single data center uses more water than a single golf course, currently golf courses collectively use more water than data centers. Granted I am not a fan of either
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u/EmergencyPrice1 15h ago
Droughts hitting 63 percent of the country and we're out here cooling servers for slop nobody asked for, make it make sense.