We’re building AI that is different. It answers to the planet, not Big Tech. And it’s now more European – which means more independent, and more private.
We’re building AI that answers to the planet. And it’s now more European – which means more independent, and more private.
Many AI datacenters use closed-loop cooling. Loaded once with RO purified water without any additions and zero discharge. I know because I work in one.
However, it’s the bad actors that get the headlines.
I don’t know if I’d say “many”, but the water usage is a red herring anyway. More importantly, data centers invariably use a lot of power and they are explicitly the reason we are currently reactivating mothballed nuclear and coal power plants, the reason we are not shutting down natural gas plants, in fact many of them are running temporarily, regularly or even full-time on their own small-scale natural gas turbines.
And they are doing this to generate mass quantities of shitty text and images, and to train new models to do the same, things that provide little to no actual value to humanity.
AI datacenters are an environmental catastrophe, whether they use any water or not.
Yes, technological societies use more and more electricity. Once cities were clogged with horses and shit. Steam engines ran on wood and coal. Cars are migrating from gasoline to electric.
I bought my suburban house 10 years ago. It had 50amp service. It had previously owned by the police chief. I had to immediately upgrade to 200 amps. The same is true for many houses in my area. None of these 1960 houses were meant for microwaves, central A/C, or a freezer in the basement. Not to mention electric for the car. My neighbor offsets this with solar.
When my company builds a new site, we make certain that capacity is added to the community that exceeds our use. And we pay for the build out. How the community adds that is their choice.
My place hosts for a biomedical. I understand they are working on molecular research including a Parkinson’s treatment. Meaningful work.
Not. All. Datacenters.
Musk, certainly is an asshole. Microsoft and Meta, too. I can’t speak to others.
Sustainable technological societies do NOT use more and more electricity, until such time as they have ensured that the externalized environmental costs of the energy providing that electricity have been adequately addressed. Posing our mostly fossil-fuelled “technological society” as if it is the only available choice besides the stone age is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.
Yes, but that applies for all human activity, we always dump heat into the air around us one way or another. Even just by being alive. The issue with open loop cooling is it also evaporates a ton of water and works best in dry climates, which is why they’re building new evaporative cooled data centers in deserts. Where water is scarce.
Many AI datacenters use closed-loop cooling. Loaded once with RO purified water without any additions and zero discharge. I know because I work in one.
However, it’s the bad actors that get the headlines.
I don’t know if I’d say “many”, but the water usage is a red herring anyway. More importantly, data centers invariably use a lot of power and they are explicitly the reason we are currently reactivating mothballed nuclear and coal power plants, the reason we are not shutting down natural gas plants, in fact many of them are running temporarily, regularly or even full-time on their own small-scale natural gas turbines.
And they are doing this to generate mass quantities of shitty text and images, and to train new models to do the same, things that provide little to no actual value to humanity.
AI datacenters are an environmental catastrophe, whether they use any water or not.
Yes, technological societies use more and more electricity. Once cities were clogged with horses and shit. Steam engines ran on wood and coal. Cars are migrating from gasoline to electric.
I bought my suburban house 10 years ago. It had 50amp service. It had previously owned by the police chief. I had to immediately upgrade to 200 amps. The same is true for many houses in my area. None of these 1960 houses were meant for microwaves, central A/C, or a freezer in the basement. Not to mention electric for the car. My neighbor offsets this with solar.
When my company builds a new site, we make certain that capacity is added to the community that exceeds our use. And we pay for the build out. How the community adds that is their choice.
My place hosts for a biomedical. I understand they are working on molecular research including a Parkinson’s treatment. Meaningful work.
Not. All. Datacenters.
Musk, certainly is an asshole. Microsoft and Meta, too. I can’t speak to others.
Sustainable technological societies do NOT use more and more electricity, until such time as they have ensured that the externalized environmental costs of the energy providing that electricity have been adequately addressed. Posing our mostly fossil-fuelled “technological society” as if it is the only available choice besides the stone age is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.
question: if it is a closed loop, how do you dump the heat out of the water? To the air? Doesn’t that alter the climate of local habitat?
Yes, but that applies for all human activity, we always dump heat into the air around us one way or another. Even just by being alive. The issue with open loop cooling is it also evaporates a ton of water and works best in dry climates, which is why they’re building new evaporative cooled data centers in deserts. Where water is scarce.
Put that way, sounds like the stupidest idea…
How come that one town lost water pressure?
And it only doubles the amount of power usage of any metropolitan area it is installed in…