floofloofOpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman
To be fair, the article linked this idiotic one about OpenAI’s “thirsty” data centers, where they talk about water “consumption” of cooling cycles… which are typically closed-loop systems.
They are typically closed-loop for home computers. Datacenters are a different beast and a fair amount of open-loop systems seem to be in place.
But even then, is the water truly consumed? Does it get contaminated with something like the cooling water of a nuclear power plant? Or does the water just get warm and then either be pumped into a water body somewhere or ideally reused to heat homes?
There’s loads of problems with the energy consumption of AI, but I don’t think the water consumption is such a huge problem? Hopefully, anyway.
It evaporates. A lot of datacenters use evaporative cooling. They take water from a useable source like a river, and make it into unuseable water vapor.