AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water | Hacker News Reader

AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water

forbes.com

7 pointszhengiszen9 comments

Sounds like the first problem super-intelligence (derived of this earth) should resolve is how to keep this system in dynamic equilibrium. Or, it should unwind itself if the solution is the problem.

The problem is the people who are hellbent on mechanizing everything with computers without stopping to think about the ultimate endpoint of their enterprise.

We don’t have computers even in the ballpark of super intelligence, we have computers that are overhyped stochastic parrots.

Overhyped stochastic parrot says what?

Believe whatever you want. But humans are far more than these sad obfuscated mechanical Turks being presented as ‘Artificial Intelligence.’

(I agree with you.)

Oof, my bad… tone is a tricky thing to judge in online land!

"The Implications of Ending Groundwater Overdraft for Global Food Security" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40686383

Computers made out of superconductors and Graphene instead of Copper would waste much less heat and water. "Ask HN: Can CPUs etc. be made from just graphene and/or other carbon forms?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40719725

Passive thermal design of data centers could reduce waste, too. Would heat vent out of server racks better if the servers were mounted vertically instead of like pizza boxes trapping heat?

> - "Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water" (2023) : "Extreme salt-resisting multistage solar distilation with thermohaline convection" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39999225

Most datacenters are not yet able to return their steamed and boiled water back to the water supply for treatment. Datacenters that process and steam sanitize water would rely upon the water utility company to then also remove PFAs.

Does OTEC work in datacenters; would that work eat some of the heat? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38222695

We can handwave any potential accountability away by pretending computers are magic.

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