Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   J. Nathan Matias 🦣 (natematias@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 04:31:22 JST J. Nathan Matias 🦣

   • John Fleck

   People are discussing the water impact of AI, a topic that @jfleck and I discussed last year when he gave me a tour of the Albuquerque water system.

   John encouraged me to compare AI to other water users. Karen Hao cites 50 million gallons a year from Microsoft's Phoenix datacenter. Golf courses in Phoenix use 80 million gallons per *day*.

   When managing water, AI is important but there are other users that could make more of a difference.

   https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602/

   https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/09/28/phoenix-golf-courses-use-more-water-than-anywhere-else-in-us/72957908/

   • Paul Cantrell repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     J. Nathan Matias 🦣 (natematias@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 04:31:34 JST J. Nathan Matias 🦣

     in reply to

     I should note that Hao is doing a *huge* public service through important reporting on water utilization of data centers & AI. It's clear that tech firms (and cities that host them) want to hide their environmental impact from the public.

     Without information, the public can't put water utilization in context or make informed decisions. So I'm very glad that Hao did this tremendously challenging journalism.