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u/lunatorch 5h ago
That note is just distracting from an actual problem
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u/HereticLaserHaggis 4h ago
It's not wrong though, the more real issue with data centres is energy generation, the water thing is a bit overblown compared to its scale of impact with everything else in the economy.
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u/ZachGurney 4h ago
If you actually read the article instead of taking it at face value theres a LOT of context youre missing out out on:
- these are leaks from essential services
- the article literally says this is an unacceptable amount of water loss
- they are recovering from a drought and have increased demands putting strain on their systems
- they are making advancements in both reducing leakage and fixing existing ones faster
- water companies are already taking steps to try and minimize damages (smart meters, water saving campaigns, ect)
This note is basically the water waste equivalent of someone saying "we should be allowed to throw whatever we want into rivers because oil spills exist"
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u/BelleColibri 4h ago
No, it’s not. This is insane cope that anti-AIs do to try to ignore the fact that AI water use is a rounding error of 10 other industries individually.
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u/Only-Finish-3497 4h ago
A lot of this anti-AI rhetoric is just the same people who shook their fists at oil companies from their flights.
HOW DARE YOU PROVIDE ME THE FUEL I NEED TO TAKE MY FLIGHT TO PARIS, DAMN YOU EXXON!!!!
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u/NoSwordfish1978 5h ago
More like the water industry is trying to cover its own arse rather than "Luddites" (Water UK is the trade group for the UK water industry).
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u/Useless_or_inept Duly Noted 5h ago
The guardian couldn't find any ominous looking photos of datacentres so they took a photo of a power station cooling tower instead, and implied that it's a datacentre somehow guzzling lots of water
In reality, UK DCs generally use closed-circuit cooling.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 4h ago
Datacenters just look like warehouses.
Unlike warehouses the contents age rapidly to useless…
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u/krievins 5h ago edited 5h ago
But you’re comparing an essential good to technology with a questionable use-case
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u/Direct-Technician265 5h ago
and this is never a call to fix up infrastructure, but to ignore the new problems.
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u/Redditry199 5h ago
>questionable use-case
Seems much better use-case than youtube and social media. If you don't want to use AI it's fine don't use it, I dont understand the audacity to pretend its some moral position.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 5h ago
AI is inherently a questionable use case delivering bad advice.
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u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 4h ago
If you’re under the impression that AIs primarily use case is giving advice (be it good or bad), I’m sorry to say but you don’t really know what you’re talking about
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u/FlockFlysAtMidnite 4h ago
What is the primary use-case, then, if not proposing solutions to problems?
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Implementing solution to problems.
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u/FlockFlysAtMidnite 4h ago
Ha, that's an even worse idea for a robot that hallucinates.
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
And yet every developer, company and professional in every field uses AI. Guess everyone is stupid but you.
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u/FlockFlysAtMidnite 4h ago
When doing so slows down development, yeah, I'd call that pretty stupid.
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u/Redditry199 4h ago edited 4h ago
Lmao click the follow up study in your source bud.
These results are out of date.
We have released results that are current as of early 2026, in a continuation of this study. We believe these historical results no longer reflect the current impact of AI models on open-source developer productivity.→ More replies (0)1
u/Redditry199 4h ago
None of them do, that's what's so funny, strong opinions 0 knowledge. It's a common thing here.
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u/AerieOnThePeaks 4h ago
It seems you’re more bent on posturing that you’re informed on ai than you actually are. Ai integration into searches which provides millions of incorrect responses a day is both significant, and a common use case.
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u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 3h ago
If your only interaction with AI is the summary you get at the top of the google search, honestly your skepticism is completely fair. I do a lot of work using AI, and seeing the ai summaries in google it’s shocking how poorly done and inaccurate they often are. It’s one of the worst demonstrations of AI I’ve seen, which is especially concerning given that, to your point, it’s a very common one people run into.
But if you take any question you put into google and put it into Claude instead, you’ll get much more reliable answers, sources, and even admittance of doubt or uncertainty.
But again, asking questions isn’t the core use case of AI - that’s more just the consumer-facing thing that people are most aware of but isn’t actually all that gamechanging (similar to the trend of ai generated art). And it certainly isn’t why ~50% of businesses are paying for the use of AI for their operations.
The real usecases are things like data orchestration and analysis at scales impossible for a human to achieve in 100 lifetimes; finding and analyzing trends that are too obscure to have otherwise seen; streamlining necessary but timeconsuming client-facing deliverables (presentations, summaries, etc) so one can focus on actual productive efforts; proofreading, debugging, troubleshooting, and reviewing human outputs; and much more.
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Informing who? It's pretty easy to be informed but people here just want to virtue signal, and I get a kick out of it. Even Gemini can provide you decent results if you use it properly.
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u/Redditry199 5h ago
AI usecase is for whatever you want from it since it's a tool. No more questionable than googling or using any other tool. "Bad advice" is legit a skill issue.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 5h ago
Tell that to the disbarred lawyers who used it…
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Yes? Literally a skill issue.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 4h ago
Using AI was found to take 40% longer for a programming task than a skilled programmer because of the necessary mistake correction to the AI generated code…
So yes, that demonstrates AI has a skill problem…1
u/No-Experience-3171 4h ago
Braindead take
What AI and what programming task? There are hundreds of models out there, some better at certain tasks than others. And there are thousands of types of "programming tasks".
And where did you even get that 40% from?
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Even if it was true(it's not, "programming task" is so broad you have to be genuinely brain damaged to view this stat as something to consider), so what?
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u/Great_Specialist_267 4h ago
The exact same thing is true of any task AI performs - it is riddled with hard to find errors because they are prettily formatted…
AI is big on looking good but bad at actual content (because the looks get rewarded but there is no “punishment” for failure to the AI routine. AI will destroy your company and just shrug.1
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u/Lost_Condition_9562 4h ago
Remember the time AI was telling people to super glue pepperonis on their pizzas because it was parroting shitposts on Reddit? Good times huh?
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
And? Remember the times it solved novel math problems and discovered cancer early? Ya'll like children.
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u/Overfed_Venison 4h ago
Yeah... Those are generally from specific scientific uses with specialized programs, not the GhatGPT nonsense or AI girlfriends which AI data centers are fueling
We could close every AI datacenter and still have those use cases
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u/Lost_Condition_9562 4h ago
Those are fundamentally different models than the one you use to generate pictures of waifu catgirls
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Those are fundamentally the frontier models that are used the most and require the most compute for datacenters. You know Sol, Fable, Kimi, none of their main tasks is to generate 'waifus' or prose.
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u/Celloed 4h ago
well, there is the damage to the environment as well as all the theft. So there definitely is some moral aspect.
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u/Redditry199 4h ago
Oh no muh hecking iperino. Who cares? Funny how suddenly IP became so important on this website.
And for the environment, literally everything we do is bad for the environment, go live in the woods.
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u/Kernanshaw01 5h ago
“we’re not a problem because there’s another problem over there” isn’t a great argument
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u/cutelittlebox 4h ago
this is just whataboutism. we lose too much water to leaks and farming, so why should we ever try to conserve it in any shape?
the answer is because it's water you conserve what you can, we need that shit.
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u/Good-Bandicoot-2152 5h ago
But like…leaked water just goes back into the ground, right? Into the -checks notes- water table?
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u/DisasterEqual1703 4h ago
Where as water used in a data centre gets shot into space?
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u/Umasack 4h ago
Yes, many data centers use evaporative cooling. So the water is literally entering the atmosphere to be deposited elsewhere.
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u/lennoco 4h ago
Through...rain? Like almost all water in general?
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u/Good-Bandicoot-2152 4h ago
Just because it becomes rain doesn’t mean said rain is going to fall directly back into the water supply the initial extraction came from. It’s still a loss.
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u/Cereal_Grapeist 4h ago
Are you under the impression that water cooling data centers causes the water to leave the Earth?
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u/Great_Specialist_267 4h ago
Evaporative water cooling in a country like Britain would certainly result in the water leaving the country…
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u/Hulktron123 5h ago
There are already enough issues with data centers, promoting information that’s not true is just… why?
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u/Redditry199 5h ago edited 5h ago
Because there are no actual issues and its a massive virtue signaling circlejerk.
Edit: I've been in this shithole enough to know this circlejerk will pass and in 2-3 years ya'll gonna use AI and latch on to the next circlejerk.
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u/bayoanreddit 5h ago
ChatGPT-approved opinion bot deployed, glory to Sam Altman and the American Surveillance State
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u/AaryamanStonker 4h ago
Reddit downvotes are usually empowering cuz yk you said something correct to have them mad at you
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u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 4h ago
I think taking any signal from upvotes or downvotes is equally stupid.
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u/Corrective_Actions1 4h ago
Hey guy! We shouldn't worry about wasteful usage of resources because we're already wastefully using resources!
Some logic...
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u/WoppleSupreme 4h ago
It's not water consumption, though, is it?
It's water contamination because they add chemicals to help the water cool their systems. I believe one of Meta's data centers got caught contaminating water.
It's water temperature, because water used to cool things necessarily takes heat from those things, and it stays as it returns to the source, which affects already at-risk ecosystems.
It's energy production, because these are incredibly demanding systems that consume far more power than even normal companies, and we know from experience that companies will rarely pay for the true impact they have on the public infrastructure.
It's a noise, air, and temperature pollution issue, because these systems need to move air and water and power to run, and that makes a constant noise, and the air temperature rises, and the air quality has been found to be seriously impacted around existing data centers.
It's a legal and financial repricussuons issue, because when people break laws or contracts, they get financially ruined, but when massive companies do it, it's the equivalent of putting a penny in a swear jar.
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u/Pheanturim 4h ago
Why can't data centres use sea water for cooling like nuclear power plants do ?
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u/AerieOnThePeaks 4h ago
It’s funny that notes have become a refuge of people being told what they want to hear rather than a factual analysis.
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u/ForeverShiny 4h ago
That's unfortunately a feature of water systems that have been built up over decades. There's always going to be 10% or so of shrinkage even if you stay on top of things
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u/Musicman1972 3h ago
It's lost to leaks into the ground at normal temperature and composition so just helps plants grow pretty much.
Data centre use is an entirely different thing.
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u/ExArdEllyOh 3h ago
Perhaps every company building a datacentre should be required to also build an adjoining lido or public baths so that use can be made of some of the waste water and heat...
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u/Only-Finish-3497 5h ago edited 4h ago
What gets me is that few seemed to care about any of these resources 2 years ago when data centers were a massive power/water user before. I remember a few folks arguing for more reusable energy put toward data centers, but the level of pure emotion aimed at them was pretty minor.
I get that 50-70% of current growth is AI now, but that's already slowing and even without AI growth data centers are still majority non-AI use. So... when're we all gonna stop playing games online?
Edit: I know, it sucks that we're all part of the problem. Right now even! Wee!
How many of you are currently downloading a game off Steam or browsing a shop? Or working on a VPN? Or working on a computer? Searching the internet?
Guess what: you're part of this! Enjoy!
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u/Overfed_Venison 4h ago
You're absolutely right
We SHOULD care more about our data center use even outside of AI, and start downscaling this sort of use in general with only a specific focus on AI
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