Yet another Hacker News

Big Tech's thirst for water is sparking a global resistance

43 points billybuckwheat 3 hours ago 30 comments

woah 1 hour ago | parent

Is this guy reviewing his own book?

bbor 28 minutes ago | parent

Oh my GOD -- great catch! Maybe the most Paris Marx thing I've ever heard of. You literally just made my day.

I do wonder how these radical skeptics --Paris Marx, Ed Zitron, Emily Bender, Alex Hanna, Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor, etc.-- will be viewed by posterity, assuming such a thing exists. When the first catastrophe(s) strike, will they just fade into obscurity, or catch some of the blame?

...on second thought, the most likely answer is that they'll just seamlessly slide into a different brand of "Anti-AI"-ism, neither acknowledging nor facing redicule for the fact that they'd have to completely abandon their core arguments to do so. If I die of a molotov thrown in 2029 from someone in this crowd after spending years begging them to look up, I'm gonna be so miffed.

shimman 18 minutes ago | parent

No, it's not a review it is an excerpt taken from the book. If you scroll down the site has a bunch of excerpts from other authors about other subjects too.

jandrewrogers 1 hour ago | parent

> "The majority [of water] is used for big agro industries, such as soya, rice, and wood pulping. Now we have Google planning to use enormous quantities of water.”

This is like calling a rubber raft "enormous" after comparing it to an aircraft carrier. Agriculture consumes astronomically more water, often wastefully, for far less valuable purposes. I can't take these objections seriously.

This is just the latest weird moral panic.

expectsomuch 1 hour ago | parent

My hunch is that when it comes to the public's perception of how water is used, it's easy to think water = food. We all instinctively know that plants need water to grow and can't live without it. And we can't live without food.

Data? Not as essential.

However, for those of us who pay attention, we know there is an extreme amount of wastefulness when it comes to how water gets used for agriculture, that is completely unnecessary. (Think growing alfalfa in Arizona, or spray irrigation in hot climates, or or or - the examples are sadly endless.

Hopefully this becomes a good opportunity for us to better pay attention and regulate how water is used in many different instances.

jsLavaGoat 1 hour ago | parent

You will never start over and rationalize water like that for ag. And it's an easy and popular target for lots of people who are disconnected to it. Residential use is where the waste is.

profdevloper 1 hour ago | parent

Both can be true, but if you subject water pricing to market forces the problem can help correct itself. That won't happen for ag pricing (strong lobby) but would get rid of the relatively minuscule residential wastefulness.

shimman 12 minutes ago | parent

Why should society let market forces decide how we treat a resource necessary for human life? I would rather trust a democratic society more than I'd ever trust any of these anti-humans that currently lead big tech. These people have shown the open disdain they have towards humanity, we are under no obligation to give them whatever they want if they just pay for it. Money is not the issue for them, they do not like being told no.

Society should, and is, openly reject such disdain and contempt toward humanity.

jvanderbot 49 minutes ago | parent

Almost. In a zero-sum world, where "Big" and "Tech" only combine into "evil", any use of a resource by big tech is intolerable. You can't get there from water use statistics, you have to assume zero sum, and you have to assume improper use.

jsLavaGoat 1 hour ago | parent

I have a hard time complaining about agriculture, which makes food, when everyone is mad about how much food costs, and suggesting we increase the cost of their inputs, even though in some places they are wildly subsidized like the southern sq valley.

10% of California's electricity goes to pumping water around. Or that was the figure not too long ago. And it's being pumped all over, not just to ag.

The reality is, the most wasteful users of water are residential, where a lot is used to ornamental things like lawns.

There's a lot to worry about with AI, but data centers? Now? No one cared when they were being built out for AWS to host 7 gazillion Wordpress pages.

strbean 38 minutes ago | parent

A lot of agricultural water use is wildly inefficient, and a lot of that inefficiency is attributable to subsidization of water prices.

Carrok 28 minutes ago | parent

> The reality is, the most wasteful users of water are residential, where a lot is used to ornamental things like lawns.

This is very easy to search. Here's an example: https://waterknowledge.colostate.edu/water-management-admini...

Agriculture is 86% for Colorado. All other sources combined pale in comparison.

And agriculture does not simply "make food". They are often growing feed for animals, so they're making food inputs, which will require still further water to become food for humans.

They also often practice flood irrigation, arguably the least efficient method of watering plants.

Finally, due to "use it or lose it" systems, they have to continue using their water or they won't have access to it next season, so they sometimes literally just dump it on the ground where there aren't any plants to keep their quota up so they don't have access to less water next year.

Yes we need food, but there are a lot of ways in which we can grow just as much or more food without using quite so much water.

dburkland 50 minutes ago | parent

Amen.

Analemma_ 48 minutes ago | parent

> I can't take these objections seriously.

Well, once there are enough of these objections, you are forced to take them seriously whether you "can" or not, because they have the power to stop the party into which so much capital and valuations are tied up.

Or to put it another way, I can't take vaccine objectors seriously, but now there are enough of them that I don't have any choice. For better or worse, that's how democracy works.

bbor 36 minutes ago | parent

This is just another sense of "take X seriously" :). In this context we're assessing the truth of political arguments, not assessing whether those arguments relate to consequential political events.

Analemma_ 28 minutes ago | parent

The thing is, in a democracy (actually in any form of government, but especially a democracy) I don't think you can cleanly separate those two things. When a sufficiently-large segment of the public decides X is a problem, then X is a problem, period. Even if X is objectively, truthfully, not a problem. And you can sit back and be satisfied that you have proven X is not a problem, but who cares? Your proof does not by itself affect the material state of the world one bit, where X will continue to be a problem.

meander_water 14 minutes ago | parent

> for far less valuable purposes

You think AI is more valuable than food? Finding this really hard to compute

lioeters 7 minutes ago | parent

> moral panic

I can't take these objections seriously.

lenerdenator 1 hour ago | parent

I think that tech companies are often insanely greedy when it comes to building these data centers. They're asking for tax breaks they don't need and putting strain on local electrical grids that they expect other people to pay for, all while bringing little in the way of permanent employment increases to the areas where they're built. It's wrong.

That being said, water isn't like electricity, land, or a given year's tax revenues. It exists in a cycle and can be reused. It can be piped in from a potable water source, and you could probably develop a cooling loop that would return it back to the civic supply in potable form.

Other than somebody not wanting to because "b-b-b-b-but what about the shareholders!?", why not build that loop, put its components into mass production, and let economies of scale start cutting the cost while having less impact upon local water districts?

barney54 1 hour ago | parent

Why do you assume there is any real impact on local water districts? The evidence isn't strong there is much of an impact.

lenerdenator 1 hour ago | parent

> Data centers cannot just use any kind of water either; it has to be clean enough to ensure the equipment and pipes are not damaged. Tapping into public drinking water is both easier and cheaper than paying the cost of treatment themselves. That means data centers end up competing with communities over their potable water supply.

Makes sense.

profdevloper 1 hour ago | parent

So provide tiered pricing for these larger consumers that would offset the additional pressure on existing infrastructure. If the infrastructure doesn't exist -- allow these datacenter companies to invest and build out the infrastructure that would also benefit other customers in that water district.

TFNA 58 minutes ago | parent

When industry is negotiating with local government to open a facility, often one of the stipulations is that the facility will pay no more than local residents for access to utilities (in fact, the industry may even demand a lower, privileged rate). If the local government did what you suggested, the industry would just go elsewhere. Modern industries are overall not very interested in paying more in order to build out infrastructure to benefit the community beyond their own site.

shimman 16 minutes ago | parent

What is the issue here? Local populations don't want to use their communities to satiate the greed of a multi trillion dollar corporation.

They can afford to pay whatever the rates, they just want the public to give them more corporate welfare so they can get greedier while inflicting a surveillance state upon the masses.

barney54 1 hour ago | parent

This is as weak article. For example, it says, "A hyperscale data center can suck up between 1 and 5 million gallons of water a day..." but does not cite a source. It also says, "Data centers end up competing with communities over their potable water supply." Not really. Data centers have to buy potable water, so unless the water providers are selling water too cheaply, what's the problem?

profdevloper 1 hour ago | parent

> Tapping into public drinking water is both easier and cheaper than paying the cost of treatment themselves. That means data centers end up competing with communities over their potable water supply.

My city has tiered pricing for water consumption based on gallons consumed per-household. Instead of the vague pearl clutching here, why can't municipalities provide preferred pricing to residential customers and have the data center consumers subsidize ongoing water treatment and infrastructure build out to support the extra capacity. Seems like a win-win.

floren 57 minutes ago | parent

Hmm, what if we donate to the politicians and do it the other way around instead?

drbojingle 1 hour ago | parent

mmmhmm. Like cities in the desert and green lawns at the golf course, right?

westurner 1 hour ago | parent

Then use thermofluid instead of water, which is corrosive.

Then go to carbon-based computing to waste less heat.

driverdan 7 minutes ago | parent

Anyone angry about DC water use should be much more angry about golf courses. They use far more water and often overuse pesticides that can run off and leach into ground water.