Concern the UK's AI ambitions could lead to water shortages - BBC News
Data centres can use vast quantities of water to cool them - but it's not clear where it will come from.
On the flip side, isn't this a chance to become the defacto world leader in desalination?
This is so absurd. If water availability is a limiting factor then why the hell would you build it in the south. Scotland and the North get plenty of rainfall, and there's an abundance of reservoirs.
Kielder is the largest reservoir by volume in Europe. It was built to supply industry in the North East. That industry no longer exists so the reservoir has a ridiculous excess capacity. So why not build the damn datacenter close to Newcastle.
But how would that continue to centralise power in the south east!?
Imagine if AI took on the accent and stereotypical behaviours of where it's data centres were located.
"Can you summarise this article for me please?"
"Why aye pet, I'll get right onto that for ya!"
If it’s used for cooling then can’t the heat energy be extracted for some other purpose, and the water recycled somehow?
Exactly this. A large proportion of the energy used by data centers ends up as heat, it shouldn't just be dumped. I've read of data centers being used to heat community swimming pools. A thought I just had was if they are using mains water to cool the data center, what stops it still being used for domestic use? It would just be warm water, which in many cases would be a benefit.
Leeds Pipes already provides heating for thousands of people from the local incinerator.
Surely something could be done with district heating networks where they collect excess heat from server farms before topping the temperature up at the incinerator?
The government is backing plans for nine new reservoirs to ease the risk of rationing and hosepipe bans during droughts.
But some of these are in areas where new data centres are set to be built.
This complaint seems odd. Surely it's good that some of the reservoirs being built will also help data centres?
Data centres are needed, reservoirs are needed, work seems to be underway for us to have both.
Put data centres under public swimming pools.
And boil the visitors?