> SINCE THE EARLY 2010s, QUILICURA HAS BECOME A MAJOR HUB FOR A.I. DATA CENTERS THAT USE LARGE AMOUNTS OF WATER TO COOL DOWN SERVERS. BECAUSE OF THAT, COUPLED WITH AN ONGOING CLIMATE CRISIS, CHILE IS FACING A SEVERE DROUGHT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL 2040.
I do not believe that data centers (Were there AI datacenters in 2010? No) are causing a severe drought in Quilicura that will extend until 2040. I believe climate change could be causing such a drought, and I believe a drought is a terrible thing.
Estimates of water used for cooling are about 0.3mL of water per chatbot query; the 25,000 prompts that this really awesome and fun project answered resulted in 7.2 liters of water "saved" from use as cooling. I would imagine these 40 people drank significantly more than that during the day.
I put "saved" in quotes because no water is destroyed during datacenter cooling. Some (the parts sent to open evaporative coolers) goes back in the atmosphere, and I imagine disperses over a pretty wide region. The rest of it is recycled locally, whether into the water table, or I would guess more likely back into cooling another round of queries.
Anyway, it's fun. But I guess I'd prefer something that is more honest about the actual uses and cycles here -- it doesn't do a local community (or a global one) any good to misinform them about the situation; to their point the situation locally sounds like it could be pretty dire. Ultimately I think it risks falling between performative and exploitative.