This is like calling a rubber raft "enormous" after comparing it to an aircraft carrier. Agriculture consumes astronomically more water, often wastefully, for far less valuable purposes. I can't take these objections seriously.
This is just the latest weird moral panic.
10% of California's electricity goes to pumping water around. Or that was the figure not too long ago. And it's being pumped all over, not just to ag.
The reality is, the most wasteful users of water are residential, where a lot is used to ornamental things like lawns.
There's a lot to worry about with AI, but data centers? Now? No one cared when they were being built out for AWS to host 7 gazillion Wordpress pages.
This is very easy to search. Here's an example: https://waterknowledge.colostate.edu/water-management-admini...
Agriculture is 86% for Colorado. All other sources combined pale in comparison.
And agriculture does not simply "make food". They are often growing feed for animals, so they're making food inputs, which will require still further water to become food for humans.
They also often practice flood irrigation, arguably the least efficient method of watering plants.
Finally, due to "use it or lose it" systems, they have to continue using their water or they won't have access to it next season, so they sometimes literally just dump it on the ground where there aren't any plants to keep their quota up so they don't have access to less water next year.
Yes we need food, but there are a lot of ways in which we can grow just as much or more food without using quite so much water.
Data? Not as essential.
However, for those of us who pay attention, we know there is an extreme amount of wastefulness when it comes to how water gets used for agriculture, that is completely unnecessary. (Think growing alfalfa in Arizona, or spray irrigation in hot climates, or or or - the examples are sadly endless.
Hopefully this becomes a good opportunity for us to better pay attention and regulate how water is used in many different instances.
Well, once there are enough of these objections, you are forced to take them seriously whether you "can" or not, because they have the power to stop the party into which so much capital and valuations are tied up.
Or to put it another way, I can't take vaccine objectors seriously, but now there are enough of them that I don't have any choice. For better or worse, that's how democracy works.
I do wonder how these radical skeptics --Paris Marx, Ed Zitron, Emily Bender, Alex Hanna, Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor, etc.-- will be viewed by posterity, assuming such a thing exists. When the first catastrophe(s) strike, will they just fade into obscurity, or catch some of the blame?
...on second thought, the most likely answer is that they'll just seamlessly slide into a different brand of "Anti-AI"-ism, neither acknowledging nor facing redicule for the fact that they'd have to completely abandon their core arguments to do so. If I die of a molotov thrown in 2029 from someone in this crowd after spending years begging them to look up, I'm gonna be so miffed.
My city has tiered pricing for water consumption based on gallons consumed per-household. Instead of the vague pearl clutching here, why can't municipalities provide preferred pricing to residential customers and have the data center consumers subsidize ongoing water treatment and infrastructure build out to support the extra capacity. Seems like a win-win.
Then go to carbon-based computing to waste less heat.
That being said, water isn't like electricity, land, or a given year's tax revenues. It exists in a cycle and can be reused. It can be piped in from a potable water source, and you could probably develop a cooling loop that would return it back to the civic supply in potable form.
Other than somebody not wanting to because "b-b-b-b-but what about the shareholders!?", why not build that loop, put its components into mass production, and let economies of scale start cutting the cost while having less impact upon local water districts?
Makes sense.