Some people in Iowa are mad that Microsoft used a ton of water to train AI while Iowa has been in a drought caused by climate change.
  • Veltoss@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    Yeah it’s a “this is cheaper and we’re greedy” problem but people will add this to their AI fearmongering and hating circlejerks.

    Apparently they’re looking into nuclear reactors for this which doesn’t waste as much water from what I understand.

    • ludEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t understand how a nuclear reactor could cool a datacenter. Could you explain?

      • CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Could supply power for better A/C?

        I admit that doesn’t make sense, but then neither does it make sense to cool a data center with evaporative water cooling as if it were a hit-and-miss engine from the 1910’s, so I dunno.

        • ludEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Cooling with evaporative cooling does make some sense since it works. It’s absolutely not ideal though.

          It should totally be a closed water (or other fluid) loop and where possible build datacenters in cooler climates.

          • V H@lemmy.stad.socialEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Latency limits datacenter placement a lot, but for batch jobs like AI training it’s certainly an option.