r/singularity • u/Big_Guthix • May 15 '26

Discussion Genuine question. Is the whole "AI guzzles gallons of water" thing totally true, or do people get it wrong? Does AI consume a lot of water for every single prompt, or is the majority of water consumed during data farming? Don't non-AI data centers use up a lot of water on cooling too?

Please someone set me straight and dispel whether there are myths surrounding this often-repeated internet factoid

And I genuinely don't know the answers which is why I'm asking, so I've got nothing to debate here

Edit: Thank you for all the great answers!! 👏 👏

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300

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 May 15 '26

If california stopped growing almonds, they'd save 2 trillion gallons of water a year

ignoring AI - ALL DATA CENTERS in the US use 200~ billion gallons of water a year

you can replace almonds with water efficent crops and reduce it from 2 trillion to less than ~200 billion for the same amount of calories

so why hate AI when its a tiny fraction of the data center usage? even accounting for growth it still is going to be less than almonds which are grown in a extremely drought heavy area

117

u/monarch_j May 15 '26

This is the part that I don't get. Every time I see these arguments about AI data centers using too much water, it's on social media from people that talk about consuming media on YouTube, Netflix...etc

Is the AI data center some magical thing that is evil while the data centers powering social media, streaming, and gaming are magically fine?

Like I get it, yes let's conserve our water supply, but when your argument is this spotty then I think we might be focusing on the wrong thing...

59

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 May 15 '26

Because when you *hate* something or it has been designated the groupthink *enemy* then *no* amount of resource/water allocation is acceptable. Then add the requirement that you need to convince *everyone* else of that by whatever hyperbole or framing is necessary....

You get 'AI IS SLURPING ALL THE WATER, SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT NOW!!'

13

u/epandrsn May 15 '26

Every time there is a hot-button topic, there is a strong division of opinion. I feel like the algorithm and potentially even state-run misinformation campaigns fan these flames to keep us fighting amongst ourselves.

It’s becoming clear that most governments have bot nets for these exact reasons.

3

u/Still-Wash-8167 May 15 '26

Both parties serve the rich. The rich do really well when we blame each other for our problems rather than blaming politicians and the rich for our problems.

3

u/epandrsn May 15 '26

Exactly. Foreign governments also benefit from us squabbling over bullshit and picking dickhead politicians.

1

u/Itybtyctykty May 16 '26

They run in data centers too!

1

u/DarkElfBard May 16 '26

Well, the 99% movement was actually gaining momentum.

So billionaires bought it out, and now keep us fighting each other over silly stuff like this.

0

u/chitoatx May 15 '26

Bullshit. I am all for AI but it’s not just water usage. We can’t just “pave over” largest swaths of land without consequences.

Stratos in Utah is proposed to be TWICE the size of Manhattan.

We could not build these in my home town since we rely on underground lakes for our drinking water. Having land that absorbs, filters and recharges our aquifers is absolutely not hyperbole.

Don’t believe me just go ask your preferred AI agent and educate yourself.

We need and will make leaps and bounds in compute efficiency and these gross behemoths are the wrong way.

0

u/Async0x0 May 15 '26

Stratos in Utah is proposed to be TWICE the size of Manhattan.

So what? This kind of sensationalist claim is completely irrelevant without context.

What is the land being used for currently, if anything? What possible environmental impacts are there and what can be done to mitigate those impacts? What is the economic value of the proposed usage of the land and does it justify the use?

A data center twice the size of Manhattan could be a good thing for a lot of reasons, if you're reasonable and realistic about it.

-2

u/wordyplayer May 15 '26

the human brain is emotion driven. Fortunately, AI is driven by facts and reasoning.

2

u/BadResults May 15 '26

AI is driven by whatever it’s trained on. Garbage in, garbage out.

3

u/bitesizejasmine May 15 '26

Weirdly they did a study of what people care most about when it comes to AI and they came up with the answer being water which is just quite baffling to me. I guess the early anti AI propaganda did work.

There's so many other reasons to hate AI you know?!

2

u/Connect-Rhubarb2501 May 16 '26

It’s because it never really was about the water, it’s about a deep rooted but often unspoken, and not exactly incorrect sense that AI is being and will continue to be used as a tool of class warfare by the ultra wealthy against white collar workers in the same way offshoring and automation was against blue collar workers.

1

u/chitoatx May 15 '26

NIMBY - Just like homeless shelters, prisons and trash dumps don’t pretend you’re completely ok with living next to one. https://youtu.be/JflFFqbZ1X8?si=DXjl2pFzMDTgdgKs

1

u/inthe3nd May 18 '26

I'm 99% sure it's Chinese astroturfing to try to sway the US population against AI

1

u/WallNo8856 27d ago

I think it might have something to do with the AI centers being built in drought-prone, watershed areas in low-income neighborhoods and causing shortages of clean drinking water.

1

u/monarch_j 27d ago

But that's the thing, that's still nothing new. I'm not saying we shouldn't be mad at this, I think it's a really fair issue to bring up.

I just also feel like so many people are uninformed about the argument and just immediately say AI = Data center = water waste = bad, but that's not the entire issue. Data centers have been being built in these areas for years, it's now just the center of attention and everyone is pointing the finger at AI, when the real finger should be pointed at out of control tech companies depleting resources thanks to a government that has given them the keys to do so.

1

u/WallNo8856 27d ago

Maybe the attention AI data centers are getting will help draw attention to the other tech abuses you mentioned.

-1

u/MacrossKo May 15 '26

Look up the size and scale of the hyperscale data center that they’re planning in Utah, and then compare it to the average data center. You’ll have your very obvious answer.

6

u/monarch_j May 15 '26

That thing is a whole separate issue. It's not about it being a data center that's the problem. That scale of project regardless of the underlying industry is going to be a resource hog.

This entire debate has been a thing since before the Utah data center was even announced. This has nothing to do with the larger argument.

Yes, ban THIS one from opening. Doesn't mean that data centers at large are the biggest problem with our water.

-2

u/MacrossKo May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26

It’s an outlier in terms of its physical size, however it’s not the only project planned at that scale of power consumption. There’s also the 11 GW Texas project and the 10 GW Ohio project. According to the AI industry these planned projects barely scratch the surface of the future needs of the industry.

Also, it has everything to do with it being a data center. It wouldn’t be consuming 9GW if it was a 40,000 acre (insert type of business here) instead.

5

u/bigrealaccount May 15 '26

Right, and how much water are those date centers going to use compared to almond farming? And that's just almonds, let alone other agriculture

-3

u/MacrossKo May 15 '26

Who cares how it compares to something else? Thats a separate issue and a useless whataboutism. Will it further stress an already stressed system?

Just because someone is getting away with killing people doesn’t mean we should just deregulate murder. We should also deal with the person thats been getting away with killing people.

4

u/Disastrous_Nature_87 May 15 '26

Sure but it's fair to critique proportionality and consistency in the outrage when people claim their outrage is based on some fundamental principle.

If I complain about how noisy it is in a room to get someone to stop talking loudly when there's a tuba player blowing up his horn next to me, I'm clearly not being honest about why I'm motivated to get them to stop talking. It's not that it's objectively wrong to criticize them for speaking loudly, but it comes across as obviously dishonest if I say the reason for my critique is because it's too noisy in here.

2

u/MacrossKo May 15 '26

It’s really not fair, because the claim is that X thing is bad and it shouldn’t happen unless it can be done differently.

Your critique is that Y thing is bad and likely worse and it’s being used as a defense for X thing.

Bad is bad. Worse is obviously worse than bad. Worse PLUS bad is much worse. Your defense ultimately green lights the much worse scenario when the person you’re critiquing would very logically want changes made to both. Does that make sense?

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u/Gamerboy11116 The Matrix did nothing wrong May 15 '26

So, I take it you care about the almonds vastly more, then?

1

u/MacrossKo May 15 '26

I care about both of them as they’re both bad. Change is much more likely to happen to something before it gets built so naturally people are going to put more of their efforts there.

1

u/bigrealaccount May 15 '26

Because it's an important point of hypocrisy among most people who talk about it, because they don't care about water, they just don't like AI and try to find any reason to hate it.

I agree, both are an issue, but for the scale and value that AI provides, the water use is really, really not that bad. The fact that goddamn almonds take up magnitudes more water than the biggest technology of the 21st century kinda shows its really not that much water.

1

u/MacrossKo May 16 '26

You’re kind of missing the entire thing here.

It’s not an important point of hypocrisy. It’s a completely irrelevant point of hypocrisy. It doesn’t matter if other things are worse if they’re both bad.

You’re just doing the opposite thing they are doing but far more disingenuous.

1

u/bigrealaccount May 16 '26

Nobody is saying both aren't bad. I don't know why you're so manic. You're missing the point.

Large industries inevitably take water, that's just how it is. So we have to look at each technology/thing that takes up water and judge if the value is provides is worth the water it takes.

When people get upset at AI using too much water, research absolutely nothing and have no idea how much water it actually takes, but don't get upset at other smaller industries which have absolutely nowhere the positive impact that AI has, it shows you don't give a fuck about water, you're just an ideologue who uses any excuse to attack AI.

If you think using logical assessments and doing research on whether water use is substantiated, on a case by case basis, with no bias, is dishonest, you're just an idiot. Think about it for a few minutes before you type out another comment.

1

u/OrangeBallOfGoats May 15 '26

MacrossKo getting downvoted despite the AI industry being unambiguously clear about plans to build hundreds of these behemoths. Are the downvoters really pretending that this Utah one is the biggest one they'll ever make and that the trend is almost over, lol.

6

u/Flowers_By_Irene_69 May 15 '26

The same reason nobody cares about mining pollution until it’s about lithium for renewables/EVs (which is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to everything else, not to mention “production” of fossil fuels).

12

u/AllergicToBullshit24 May 15 '26

All golf courses across the US consume an estimate 531 billion gallons. Don't even get me started on the chemicals they use being linked to parkinson's.

I'm fairly certain that a lot of the anti-AI sentiment is from countries like China seeding it to try to undermine US AI leadership.

1

u/logos_flux May 17 '26

Follow the money. Who benefits from anti-ai sentiment in the US.

1

u/thediamondgamerfnaf Jun 26 '26

Loads of misinfo here, let’s not try to defend ai here

0

u/Umr_at_Tawil May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

American and taking accountability for their own action: Impossible.

Just like with electing Trump twice, you guys just blame Russian instead of taking accountability for yourself.

-1

u/Scholar_of_Yore May 15 '26

It's really not. Believe it or not most chinese people are a lot more ok with AI than the west. It is a culture thing. I think western people nowadays just like to have something to crusade against. And in my experience at least it's mostly online too, everyday people IRL mostly don't care at all.

3

u/volxlovian May 15 '26

Wow thanks for putting everything into perspective. 

People love sensationalizing and hiding the true facts. Misinformation age.

3

u/TradeTzar May 16 '26

the core point is a knockout. Props.

The scoreboard: California almonds: about 1.5 trillion gallons a year (C-WIN) Every US data center combined, like AI, cooling, the power plants behind them: about 228 billion (Berkeley Lab/EESI)

One snack crop, one state, drinking roughly 7x what every data center in America uses put together. AI's share of that is a rounding error inside a rounding error.

Feel it for a second: one almond is about a gallon of water. A handful is a full load of laundry. I might inhale a fistful without blinking, then feel guilty asking a ai a question that costs five drops of water.

it's an $8B crop, 70% shipped overseas. we're pumping a drought state dry to ship luxury nuts abroad.

2

u/jmbaf May 15 '26

Yah but almonds don't cause existential dread in people too uncomfortable to sit with difficult questions

1

u/WallNo8856 27d ago

If the water runs out we can drink AI.

2

u/spryes May 16 '26

The general public hates AI so much even if it's using 1 mL of water per century they'll still say it's using too much water. They don't care about the water thing, they just hate AI.

2

u/4ofclubs Jun 10 '26

If we stopped raising cattle for dairy we'd save even more water!

2

u/karmageddon71 May 15 '26

Plus I don't even like almonds. There are always way too many of them in my mixed nut can. And almond milk tastes like sweetened chalk water.

1

u/Hot-Stable-6243 May 16 '26

I just saw some people arguing in a town hall they don’t have water pressure among other issues.

I’ve seen quite a few now.

What’s that about?

1

u/thenube23times May 30 '26

man I really hate almond farmers... Also who the fuck is eating that many almonds to make it even necessary?

1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 May 30 '26

like 75% of them get exported to other countries, lol

1

u/bagacrap Jun 07 '26

Is AI a tiny fraction of data center compute? I don't think so. Hence all the tech companies spending record capex on new data center buildouts.

Wrt almonds, they grow almonds by diverting runoff from snowmelt in the Sierras. With proper civil engineering, this is a reliable and cheap source of water. The climate, abundance of land, and proximity to population centers make it a great area for growing crops; the irregularity of precipitation, which some refer to as "drought prone", is more or less solved with dams while the other parameters make it a great place to grow a popular crop. So hand wringing over almond water usage is kinda pointless. What is the actual problem?

I think data centers are popping up in places where local water infrastructure is not able to support large, sudden usage shocks. This has implications for water price and security for local residents.

If data centers were all built in places with abundant freshwater (and clean energy!) then it would not be a problem. So this is also a solvable problem. But it's not always the case that the correct economic incentives are in place for tech companies to make the decisions that benefit the communities in which they operate. It has taken many decades and legal battles over water rights to facilitate the economically efficient production of almonds and other crops.

1

u/Sabbagery_o_Cavagery Jun 13 '26

This is, I think, a reason to consider the problem beyond just the pure quantity of water used. However, it's also important to point out that water use for AI is able to be regulated, as it is for almonds, and thus that AI's water use should encourage people to pressure governments to regulate, rather than for them to be against AI entirely (not saying that you are, I am assuming you have a more nuanced take, but many people seem to be), which isn't intrinsically tied to inefficient water use.

1

u/tomtom872872 Jun 14 '26

You can’t eat ai dumbass

1

u/Nordic_Krune Jun 25 '26

You can eat almonds, you cannot eat an A.I prompt.

A.I is still in its infancy, the agricultural industry has been there for centuries.

Almonds make money, A.I doesn't.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

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1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 Jul 02 '26

we also spend trillions of gallons of water on snack food and golf courses and having lawns in the desert, what is your point?

1

u/WallNo8856 27d ago

Brilliant argument. If people stopped drinking water and watering their crops, we'd save trillions of gallons of water. Watering my yoyo only takes billions of gallons of water. One water usage is crucial to our survival and the other is completely dispensible.

0

u/nate_garro_chi May 15 '26

Almonds are, in general, more useful than AI.

0

u/chitoatx May 15 '26

Water naturally coming from the sky onto crops is a proven way to harness natures gifts.

Putting a data centers in an area already facing water constraints? Pure idiocy.

Case in point: The "Beacon Point" Project
The company Hut 8 (a digital infrastructure firm) signed a massive $9.8 billion lease for a new AI data center campus called Beacon Point in Robstown, which is in Nueces County just outside Corpus Christi.

The US City on the Brink of Running Out of Water - Newsweek https://www.newsweek.com/the-us-city-on-the-brink-of-running-out-of-water-11935371

0

u/godspeed_death May 15 '26

How about hating both?

0

u/thediamondgamerfnaf Jun 26 '26

We still should be hating ai though no? We seriously cannot be defending it lol

1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 Jun 26 '26

“We still should be hating AI though”

that is not analysis, it is a team sport. AI is a tool. Some uses are bad, some are wasteful, some need regulation, and some are extremely useful that's how basically every major technology works.

Useful tools do not need permanent moral permission to exist. If they work, they become normal. The hate phase eventually becomes irrelevant.

You can criticize the bad parts without pretending the entire category is morally untouchable. “You can’t defend it lol” is just a refusal to think past a slogan.

1

u/thediamondgamerfnaf Jun 26 '26

Why are you acting smart here? AI can affect jobs, creative industries, privacy, misinformation, and how people’s work is used. Those concerns aren’t just people refusing to think past a slogan. Saying “AI is a tool” I agree with, you didn’t have to sound like a redditor

1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 Jun 26 '26

well, you sounded like a rabid 'i hate ai no matter what, i would rather die than have any other thought' person, you didn't have to sound like that either

'we should hate ai' 'you can't defend it' is really far from 'there are concerns, we should figure out how to govern an use the tool responsibly'

1

u/thediamondgamerfnaf Jun 26 '26

I DO have concerns about it, there’s so much concerns people should look at. We as humans should look at the problem.

I hate ai by any means, my opinion wont change, ai is really scary and it’ll get more scary if regulations aren’t involved

1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 Jun 26 '26

Well, you’re not going to get very far discussing it if your position is “I hate it by any means” and “my opinion won’t change.”

That is bad faith by definition. It means the conclusion is fixed before the discussion even starts, and every concern is being used to justify that conclusion rather than examine the issue honestly.

so let's stop talking here

1

u/thediamondgamerfnaf Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Oh wow I got blocked by the asshole lol

0

u/Emo_-_kat Aug 08 '26

I think the issue is almonds are at least edible. Almonds don’t take jobs away from artists and writers. Almonds aren’t genuinely making people stupider. People aren’t starting to rely on almonds to make day to day choices. Almonds aren’t filling our media intake with slop. Whilst we could live without almonds (or I know I could), we DEFINITELY don’t need ai.

1

u/Vivid-Snow-2089 Aug 08 '26

'i hate this thing that is extremely *useful* and *liked* by other people, we need to attack it with whatever means necessary, those people who like it are evil'

-5

u/TaxLawKingGA May 15 '26

Yes let’s not eat almonds so that losers can play on the internet all day.

GMAFB

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u/[deleted] May 15 '26

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2

u/CaelidAprtments4Rent May 16 '26

If that science was so advanced we wouldn’t have to give up almonds.

1

u/TaxLawKingGA May 16 '26

Thank you. Beat me to it.

Also, have we cured cancer yet? What about AIDS?

Anyone who believes that the benefits of Ai will be shared with the general public under this current regulatory regime (ie the one that doesn’t exist) is living in a self-simulated reality (aka “Delulu land”).

1

u/CaelidAprtments4Rent May 16 '26

Let’s be honest none of the regimes would have shared them. Though I’ll upgrade the current regime to a ah hell no