AIBU to be concerned that people do not know data centres use drinking water?

Actually data centres don't REQUIRE drinking water.
No more than your toilet requires drinking water.
And just like your garden doesn't require drinking water.

However water companies only supply potable water, not grey water which would work for all the applications above.

So the point that they use drinking water is moot, they just use water.

If they're placed near rivers or the sea, and they can get an extraction license then they can use normal water.

The Chinese are already sticking them under the sea just off the coast of Jiangsu if that helps.

@liquidfinch Are you also concerned that we are expected to wash our recycling using potable water? That's patently wasteful.

The same organisations who recycle UK waste do not require this on other countries. In France for example, citizens mounted a campaign about how wasteful it was and, quel surprise, now you can put your recyclable materials in without washing them.

I work for a Pharma company (oncology) and AI is reducing the research time by 80% and reducing the cost of developing new drugs significantly (current cost of one of our drugs to get to market is $2 billion and many fail at stage 3).
This means much quicker development and deployment, saving thousands of lives,
This is already feeding through the system, and we are nowhere near being ‘fully AI’.

This morning I went to the doctor. She fed all the information into their AI system and came back with the risks and recommendations in a few seconds.

AI has real world uses, hence the hundreds of billions being spent on it.

I am at the point where everything is a distraction! I have noticed my social media feeds have gone VERY right wing in the last week! Which given how liberal I am is alarming.

As per PP, older data centers evaporate, new ones don’t.
Your concerns are resolved by the DC using a closed system, so a planning issue.
A bigger issue might be the power they will be consuming ( was it you mentioning this elsewhere? ) if they are expecting not to generate it themselves.

How? And how many? And do these figures outweigh the multitude of negative impacts that AI and the data centres require to keep "improving" it? I have yet to see anything that suggests AI is a net benefit for humanity in general or the environment. In fact, quite the reverse.

Traditional datacentres, the ones that host websites and applications for businesses and the like do not use any water at all - they use very large air conditioning units and extractors - cold air is blown up through floor vents in "cold aisles", sucked through the racks into the "hot aisle" at the back of the racks, and then extracted by fans and cycled back through the coolers. To re-emphasise - these use NO water. Just like your office a/c does not use any water.

The vast majority of datacentres in the UK fall into this group.

AI datacentres, the ones that host LLMs, produce much more heat, and therefore need watercooling - the racks and servers actually have watercooling circuits running through them - just like a car engine. These datacentres fall into two types:

Open Loop - this is where fresh water is pumped constantly through the system and left to evaporate using water towers - similar but smaller to the ones you see at a power station. This is what people are concerned about.

Closed loop - this is where the system is filled once and then closed - hot water is cooled through radiators. This works exactly the same way that your coolant system works - the coolant is pumped round in a constant cycle.

All AI datacentres under construction in the UK use closed loop, however there are a number of older traditional datacentres which have been extended to host AI workloads and these use open loop, especially in Scotland. These currently use 20000 m3 of waters per year. This is about the same as 8 olympic swimming pools per year.

Yes. That's why.the US is outsourcing data centres to India and other developing countries. I expect the UK to do the same. Just as we outsource our rubbish.

Yes I knew.

I find it fascinating to see how much push back you are getting on this though OP.

Concerns have been raised around this for quite a while now. And yet there is a lot of denial on this thread.

It's like that film "don't look up".

Honestly part of the issue here is that there isn't enough forced reporting of how much water is used, drinkable or not. So it's actually hard to assertain real numbers.

And less water use can mean more electricity use.

More modern datacentres are using closed loop, but there are no standards.

It's not using a bottle of water every time you ask AI a question, but certainly movement towards less usage of water is needed, and indeed happening.

The new data centres proposed chug the same water around the data centre forever. Chill out OP!

AI progress is rapid because the ultra wealthy want a totally controllable workforce with none of the complications of real people. It isn’t about replacing our jobs it’s to replace us.

My teen once told me all water is about 4.5 billion years old, and practically all water on earth is recycled naturally and will fall as rain eventually - regardless of it's previous use.

Another weird fact is the average age of swimming pool water is about 10 years.

Thanks.
So as long as they are using a closed system, it’s a non-story.
As per a PP, the unfixed leaks waste millions of gallons everyday, that’s a worthy story.

AI is saving lives.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and found it very interesting.

I’ve followed Kyle Hill for a while now and his videos always seem well researched and balanced.

ETA - The video title is Data center water is a distraction.

Perhaps all the Data centres should be in the Lake District!

A quick google will answer this for you.

Glad it's not just me being educated by my children!

Yes I knew (thanks to teenage DC!) and think it's madness. AI can take a running jump as far as I'm concerned, we've managed this far without it.