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How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I read somewhere recently that AI data center open loop water cooling systems drain 100 million liters of freshwater a day and evaporate it away.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Would you mind sharing where you read that?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    This isn't the article I read but it has tons of info about this:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's so annoying when you try to discuss this because often a gaggle of idiots come out and point, superficially, that water gets recycled into nature. They always ignore the cost of making that water fit for human usage.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I’m not very well read on this so I could very well be off-base, but couldn’t you leverage the heat as a means to desalinate saltwater instead of using freshwater and letting it evaporate into the atmosphere?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    While desalination does need a lot of energy it's dealing with the waste brine that's the bigger problem when actually planning one. You can't just dump it back into the ocean without killing a huge swathe of marine life.

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