Yes, it is worthwhile to ask how much value we get.
And a whole bunch of us are saying we don't see the value in all these datacenters being built and run at full power to do training and inference 24/7, but you just keep ignoring or dismissing that.
It is absolutely possible that generative AI provides some value. That is not the same thing as saying that it provides enough value to justify all of the resources being expended on it.
The fact that the amount of water it uses is a fraction of what is used by agriculture—which is both one of the most important uses humans can put water to, as well as, AIUI, by far the single largest use of water in the world—is not a strong argument that its water usage should be ignored.
That's a fair point. For people already finding great utility in GenAI it seems like a foregone conclusion, but for others it can be understandably frustrating that people take it as an article of faith that "AI is worth it."
Disclosure, I'm very much in the former camp, but I try to ground myself with broader empirical evidence. I've found an increasing amount of empirical evidence that GenAI is providing value more than commensurate with its costs.
Largely the studies I've looked at focus on productivity boosts, I guess because that is very easy to tie to economic impact. This recent thread has some relevant sources and extremely rough numbers, but the outcome seems to be that for a 1% increase in datacenter usage we may have gotten a 1.2% boost in national productivity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794907
Now, this absolutely not a rigorous analysis, but could be a good starting point for how to think about these tradeoffs.
it is also a fraction of golf courses which you again ignore. this is just typical "don't do anything!!" ism. there's no argument here.. even if data centres used .00001 millilitre of water you would say the same thing.
Oh, I think golf courses shouldn't exist. They're awful in a number of ways. You want to play golf? VR or minigolf.
But (as I pointed out elsewhere in this discussion [0]) why should I have to mention everything that uses water in a way I think is detrimental in order to be allowed to talk about why I think this thing uses water in a way that is detrimental?
Why would the logic extend there? If golf courses really do use a lot of water, energy, etc, and they largely benefit a small subset of people, it doesn’t make a ton of sense for them to exist.
Of course making the world a better place for everyone is very against western and American exceptionalism and freedom.
And a whole bunch of us are saying we don't see the value in all these datacenters being built and run at full power to do training and inference 24/7, but you just keep ignoring or dismissing that.
It is absolutely possible that generative AI provides some value. That is not the same thing as saying that it provides enough value to justify all of the resources being expended on it.
The fact that the amount of water it uses is a fraction of what is used by agriculture—which is both one of the most important uses humans can put water to, as well as, AIUI, by far the single largest use of water in the world—is not a strong argument that its water usage should be ignored.