Caleb Hammer on Data Center Water Usage

    by Silvestre: Caleb Hammer

    Caleb Hammer is pushing back on the idea that data centers are bad for the environment, specifically regarding water usage. He reported that data centers use less than 0.5% of all freshwater in the US, while lawn maintenance uses 2.5%. Hammer also stated that data centers built by Amazon and Google are net contributors to water.

    Transcript (en)

    I would actually rather AI not be a thing because I'm terrified of what it's gonna do for jobs. But you probably are against data centers too. I am. What's the argument? Other than you just have blue hair, what's the argument? Well, the fact that they're bad for the environment. Okay, why are they bad for the environment? Well, for one, they use a lot of the fresh water and we're starting to have a deficit of fresh water. Okay, they use less than 0.5% of all fresh water in the United States. Lawn maintenance in this country uses 2.5% of all fresh water. I also don't think lawn maintenance is a good thing either. Very good. Data centers built by Amazon, Google are actually net contributors to water. I'm not anti-AI. I'm anti-using it for stuff like art. I don't like it either. That's what I mean. I don't like it. But if you don't figure out how to use it for what you do, you're going to get left behind. You use it for some of your business planning. Yeah, I was going to say, I use it for my business planning. Well, you're using the data centers. They use 10 times the electricity per query in chat GPT than you do a Google search. You're doing that. And then you're saying... They're so performative. They don't even know what they're talking about. Just remember, I can vote.