This is absurd. Worrying about water use of datacenters implies some sort of novel avenue of pollution or waste, when it's power generation at the root, and whe

This is absurd. Worrying about water use of datacenters implies some sort of novel avenue of pollution or waste, when it's power generation at the root, and when you look at power consumption for compute adjacent and datacenter related costs, it's not all that much - roughly in the range of 1-2% of global power generation. This seems part of a coordination between various legacy media interests (print organizations, academics and research journals, and others) aimed at running the AI is Evil narrative. There are many, many, things to criticize about the way the world works, water consumption by datacenters is tone deaf whinging about the thread count of your throne's seatcushion. Datacenters and computers are some of the most highly efficient and effective uses of power humanity has ever come up with. That single, highly efficient use of resources is the basis of modern society. For all the ills and evils, it's allowed flourishing and coordination in the effective and efficient use of resources at a global scale, making life a lot better for a lot more people than at any previous time in all of human history. Life is staggeringly better than 100 years ago, with absolute poverty and quality of life reaching what would have seemed absolutely miraculous levels by any other historical standards. They've got to find better stories to tell, or we might stop taking them all seriously. AI can't replace these second-handers soon enough.