this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Yes, water consumption is a shit reason to argue against data centers. Power consumption is the real big issue
It's still a valid reason considering how many US counties are struggling with droughts.
But following that argument wouldn't you want to shut down the big water consumers? There are many things using more water than AI data centres.
Not sure how to correctly link comments across instances on lemmy, but I went way too deep into this in another comment here https://slrpnk.net/comment/23703343
Tl;dr for this specific case: (animal) agriculture is the main reason the aquifers in USA are drying out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Accelerated_decline_in_aquifer_storage
It’s not even power consumption but the sudden change in power consumption, faster than infrastructure can respond. And more importantly it’s datacenters just bypassing rules for everyone else, such as by running on generators
There was a video that put it in interesting perspective ….. ai datacenters are only increasing our power usage by like 1%/year and we used to grow energy consumption by multiples of that. It’s not a big deal …… except that now our infrastructure planning and investment is geared toward zero growth.
In recent years our energy consumption has been flat, so that’s what the industry can support
1 pound of beef equals 650,000 prompts in terms of emissions. Livestock is about 150x more emissions than AI.
Yep livestock and beef specifically is insanely bad for the environment. People who don't want to go vegetarian/vegan can still make a meaningful difference by cutting out beef.
Power consumption has issues other than emissions, the increased demand is driving up utility prices and reopening coal plants.