this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 39 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I feel like we’re missing the forest for the trees here, this is all in service of a feature in bing that was supposed to revolutionize search but actually caused a 0% increase in Bing’s market share from q1 to q3 https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/bings-search-market-share-fails-to-budge-despite-ai-push/

[–] theDoctor@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

AI Tools - plural. ChatGPT (and OpenAI as a whole) predominantly runs on Azure infrastructure. Microsoft also owns GitHub with its associated copilot. And now all the Microsoft product specific copilots.

Not trying to defend their usage, but there are several forests here that are quite visible.

[–] Taringano@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Oh wow didn't know github was owned by Ms

[–] bioemerl@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'd use it all the time if it didn't require an account.

[–] elfin8er@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

I've been using the Codium plugin in VSCode for a little bit now and find it useful. It's free, but does require an account.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 30 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I gotta wonder though, water used for server cooling is basically just run through metal fixtures and returned right? Couldn't it be possible to force some kind of maintenance and cleanliness standards onto the equipment and just have the water return to the supply? Is there any reason that water wouldn't be just as drinkable after?

[–] Namahanna@lemm.ee 23 points 2 years ago

They use evaporative cooling on days where it is over 85f

Microsoft’s data centers currently use adiabatic cooling, which relies on outside air to cool down temperatures inside. It’s a system that uses less electricity than air conditioning and less water than cooling towers. But when temperatures rise above 85 degrees Fahrenheit, outside air isn’t very helpful. At that point, an evaporative cooling system kicks in, which uses water. It works like a “swamp cooler” — cooling the air by pushing it over or through water-soaked screens.

https://local.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Datacenter-water-consumption-fact-sheet.pdf

[–] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

They probably treat the water to prevent mineral and bacterial build up. No matter how sanitary it is it will probably require some amount of treatment before it can be put back into public drinking supplies.

[–] MSids@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 years ago

Well, all sewer water requires treatment before it's used again but this water doesn't go into the sewer, it's evaporative cooling so it goes into the air.

[–] Taako_Tuesday@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

No, but I assume you'd have to build extra infrastructure for that, which is expensive. They might now consider it worth it if they continue to need that much water, though.

[–] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If it's just for cooling, wouldn't they just be able to pull water directly from a lake and then return the same water into the lake? Why is any consumption happening?

[–] bladerunnerspider@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Dirty water is bad for cooling equipment

[–] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Well, building on that question, why do they need a constant supply of clean water? My desktop PC has a water cooler, and it just recirculates the same water.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because that's expensive to build on this scale. They'd have to cool the water back down again.

It's cheaper to just run cold tapwater in at a fast rate, and dump the hot water intothe sewer.

Which is why we need laws that go after industries that use insane amounts of water, if we don't it causes shortages and everyone's rate to go up

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s cheaper to just run cold tapwater in at a fast rate, and dump the hot water into the sewer.

There should be a cost to corporations using municipal water supplies for purposes unrelated to direct consumption for drinking, cooking, washing, toilets. You shouldn't be able to use it for cooling only, and you shouldn't be able to bottle and resell it.

[–] brlemworld@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

We should make it exponentially more expensive the more you use.

[–] netburnr@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Sounds like they are using evaporation cooling towers for the air chillers.

[–] kitonthenet@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

It’s evaporative cooling, big cooling towers

[–] kalleboo@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Power plants use lake water directly for cooling - they use a heat exchanger

[–] bhmnscmm@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

The water isn't being consumed. It's going through the same process all the water in the city is going through.

Pulled from the river, cleaned, used for cooling at the data centers, and returned to the river via the waste water system.

The only loss is the energy/resources to treat the water.

[–] aeternum@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

if you think that's wild, animal agriculture uses 13 TRILLION litres or gallons of water a year. Compared with fracking, which uses 220 billiion.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i don't think that's right. can you substantiate that?

[–] aeternum@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

oh, you know what? it's actually worse. significantly worse. It's 34-76 trillion gallons annually, https://www.cowspiracy.com/facts

Animal agriculture water consumption ranges from 34-76 trillion gallons annually. [ii] [xv]

"Summary of Estimated Water Use in the United States in 2005". United States Geological Service

Pimentel, David, et al. "Water Resources: Agricultural and Environmental Issues". BioScience. (2004) 54 (10): 909-918

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

the USGS paper says almost no water goes to livestock

Combined withdrawals for livestock and aquaculture were less than 3 percent of the total water withdrawals in 2005. Livestock withdrawals include water for livestock, feedlots, and dairy operations, and accounted for 2,140 Mgal/d, most of which (60 percent) was supplied by groundwater.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

here's the relevant section from the pimentel paper

Water use in livestock production. The production of animal protein requires significantly more water than the production of plant protein (Pimentel et al. 2004). Although US livestock directly uses only 2% of the total water used in agriculture (Solley et al. 1998), the indirect water inputs for livestock pro- duction are substantial because of the water required for forage and grain crops. Each year, a total of 253 million t grain are fed to US livestock, requiring a total of about 25 × 1013 L water (Pimentel et al. 2004). Worldwide grain production specifically for livestock requires nearly three times the amount of grain that is fed to US livestock and three times the amount of water used in the United States to produce grain feed (Pimentel et al. 2004).

Animal products vary in the amounts of water required for their production (table 2). For example, producing 1 kg chicken requires 3500 L water, whereas producing 1 kg sheep (fed on 21 kg grain and 30 kg forage) requires approximately 51,000 L water (table 2; USDA 2003, Pimentel et al. 2004). If cattle are raised on open rangeland and not in confined feed- lot production, 120 to 200 kg forage are required to produce 1 kg beef. This amount of forage requires 120,000 to 200,000 L water per kg (Pimentel et al. 2004), or a minimum of 200 mm rainfall per year (Pimentel et al. 2004).

Agricultural production in the United States is projected to expand to meet the increased food needs of the US pop- ulation, which is expected to double in the next 70 years (USBC 2003). Developing countries are expected to feel the impacts of this food crisis to a greater extent as demands ap- proach those of developed countries and populations continue to rise (Rosegrant et al. 2002). Increasing crop yields neces- sitate a parallel increase in the use of fresh water in agricul- ture. Therefore, increased crop and livestock production during the next 5 to 7 decades will significantly increase the demand on all water resources, especially in the western, southern, and central United States (USDA 2003) and in many regions of the world with low rainfall.

so it looks like the methodology isn't even explicit in this paper, and we need to see pimentel's OTHER 2004 publication to understand how he arrived at the water values. MY SUSPICION is that he includes the water used in, for instance, cotton production to add to the sum used in livestock. that's at best an oversight: that "use" is actually a conservation of resources. given that i do see soy mentioned, i would also guess that it's including the waste product from soybean oil production, which accounts for 85% of the global crop weight but only 17% of the end use weight. the remaining ~68% of the global crop weight would be waste if not fed to livestock.

i can dig into the further methodology after work, but you should be dubious about these claims, especially the original source, which seems to be intentionally misrepresenting the USGS paper.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

both of those are 20 years out of date but I'll look at the methodology. it still seems off by orders of magnitude

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Rain World moment

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Microsoft said in a statement this week that it is investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint “while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

Microsoft first said it was developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers for OpenAI in 2020, declining to reveal its location to AP at the time but describing it as a “single system” with more than 285,000 cores of conventional semiconductors, and 10,000 graphics processors — a kind of chip that’s become crucial to AI workloads.

It wasn’t until late May that Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, disclosed that it had built its “advanced AI supercomputing data center” in Iowa, exclusively to enable OpenAI to train what has become its fourth-generation model, GPT-4.

In some ways, West Des Moines is a relatively efficient place to train a powerful AI system, especially compared to Microsoft’s data centers in Arizona that consume far more water for the same computing demand.


The original article contains 1,229 words, the summary contains 252 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] HoustonHenry@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

For a second, I thought that Keegan-Michael Key was gonna have to lecture someone

[–] ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago

Rain World time