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

[liquidfinch]

Made a thread about the hosepipe ban and data centres came up.

One person got very angry with me and said I was being ridiculous for bringing that up since data centers do not use drinking water... Surprise! Data centres do require drinking water (potable).

Quite concerned that most people are unaware of what the reality is and want to bring this issue to light.

YABU = if you knew that data centres use drinking water
YANBU = if you did not know that data centres use drinking water

Edit: I've realised this question doesn't really lend itself naturally to an AIBU question, sorry for the confusion while I worked out which way around it made sense to ask for votes! If you did know about this but don't think I was being unreasonable I suppose you could just not vote...

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.

You claimed they don't let the water evaporate.
I showed you evidence that they do.
You're completely ignoring that. Concerning.

However, I do agree with you that unfixed leaks is a worthy story.

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.

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.

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

But the new data centres that have been proposed don't exist yet. Any thoughts about the ones that do?

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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

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.

OP, there is loads of misleading information which uses examples of enormous datacenters in the USA or China and portrays them as being the sort of datacenters we have in the UK.

There are places in the world with masses of spare water. There, datacenters use evaporative cooling because it is dead cheap. Massive datacenters get built in these places precisely because electrictity and water are cheap.

In the UK, it is not economically attractive to build these sorts of data centers because our water and electricty are expensive. Therefore our data centers mostly use closed or waterless systems with very little water usage.

https://www.techuk.org/data-centre-water-use.html

I believe there are grey water systems you can have installed, but they cost a fair amount.

They use clean drinking water, produce huge heat, noise that travels miles, vibration and frequencies damaging to human health and even bacteria that cannot be dealt with - check the bacteria issues with the new Meta datacentre. In Reading, Microsoft want to use gas to power the new proposed site, next to the Thames as the grid can't deal with the power needs but you'll be told to turn lights off, not use a hose and not mention that employment zones now being consumed for AI data centres!!

Thank-you for pointing it out, I had assumed that (at least in the UK where there is lots of coast) they would use seawater for cooling as nuclear power plants do - although even that heats up the sea around the "out" pipes and changes the local ecosystem.

That sounded a tad arrogant OP. There’s lots of other things people don’t know either. Saying “ did you know “ is useful but then saying we are allowed to form our own opinion is a bit cringe

I don't really see why they need to use fresh drinking water for cooling. It would seem perfectly possible to design a system that did use water but used it over and over again by cooling the water again using a heat exchange mechanism. It's not a reason not to use AI, it's a reason to regulate and force them to do something sensible that doesn't use millions of gallons of water.

If you are going to worry about anything about data centres

Its not the water that is the main concern

It is the fuel used for the back up systems (used during high power usages or power cuts)

It is the fuel used by the maintenace teams who drive round to do non stop maintenance & repairs

Plus the ongoing costs of the above

Google "grey water" and see how Germany races to the top