AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water
AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water
With the rise of generative AI, companies have significantly raised their water usage, sparking concerns about the sustainability of such practices.
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Relatively easy, but expensive, problem to solve. We have all the salt water you need. Build nuclear plants and desalinate.
Stop allowing them to use the Colorado River.
I'm pretty sure desalinization doesn't scale. The salt needs to go somewhere.
And it takes a lot of energy
which may not be an issue since companies running AI stuff are planning to deploy civilian mini nuclear reactors around the country
we can use them for some sort of project like building a pyramid out of salt, and it will become the perfect venue to host league of legends tournaments.
I feel like those tournaments usually have more salt than they can handle already...
it scales fine (roughly linear at large scale), people just don't want to pay the energy cost because they think farms need cheap water.
Where would the salt go?
brine evaporation ponds
Where does the salt go after the water evaporates from the brine? You can't just dump it back in the ocean, the concentration destroys wildlife.
Landfill? Salt deserts? It's gotta go somewhere.
Sell it for cheap to barbecue houses
Sea salt as a food additive would get cheaper probably.
last I checked salt mining is still an industry
Why not just put it back in the fucking ocean?
Because that's kills fish
How?
You're taking salt from a large volume and putting it in a small area all at once. It kills the fish
I guess if the plan was to sprinkle the salt over miles and miles of ocean, that could work. But that's ridiculous to implement.
Well yeah I imagine airplanes would be used
Take a bunch of salty water
Remove most of the water for other purposes
You now have to dispose of the same amount of salt, but less water. It's hypersalinated, and toxic as fuck.
Yes but rain fall would mitigate this would it not?
Unfortunately not. It's actually a real problem
Fuck. Maybe we could just eat the salt...
seawater is not all saltwater, its a bunch of other chemicals in it too.