Draft Substack post: AI water usage is not the biggest issue #274
Description
Write a Substack post explaining why water usage is not the most important or urgent concern in AI, compared to other impacts (e.g. labor, power concentration, surveillance, safety). Include concrete numbers where possible, intuitive comparisons, and a section on what is worth focusing on.
Pun: "hot take"
In Malmo in Sweden, they simply dump heat into the ambient air, combined with closed-loop cooling that doesn't require cycling water or creating wastewater from pure water. The water's temperature just changes as it circulates around the cooling loop. When it reaches the outside, heat exchangers dump it in the atmosphere. When it reaches the inside, it absorbs heat from the computer. You're not going to make any impact on the atmosphere's temperature by pointing a hot air blower out the window.