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Fury Mounts over a Global A.I. Frenzy

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31 points moneycantbuy | 4 comments | 20 Oct 25 15:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.994s | source
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semiquaver ◴[20 Oct 25 18:17 UTC] No.45647228[source]▶
Why can’t the water for cooling these be a closed-loop system?
replies(4): >>45647239 #>>45647840 #>>45647877 #>>45650899 #
1. JadeNB ◴[20 Oct 25 18:18 UTC] No.45647239[source]▶
Maybe I'm being overly simplistic, but water that's been used once for cooling can't be used again until something else, possibly time or other natural processes, has cooled the water itself off, right?
replies(1): >>45647807 #
2. voakbasda ◴[20 Oct 25 19:02 UTC] No.45647807[source]▶
One option would be to install a water cooling system in the loop. Sure, that could easily double the facility’s power requirements, but that’s better than depleting limited water resources. Any power capacity built out for AI will likely find other uses if/when that bubble pops.
replies(1): >>45648448 #
3. wiml ◴[20 Oct 25 19:53 UTC] No.45648448[source]▶
The water loop is the cooling system. If you had a way to get rid of the heat from this new cooling system you could have just used it directly in the first place.
replies(1): >>45649458 #
4. m4rtink ◴[20 Oct 25 21:13 UTC] No.45649458{3}[source]▶
I think it is just cheaper as long as you have cheap/free water you can evaporate. Otherwise you would have to have to run a closed loop cooling system using regular AC tech (eg. some low boiling point liquid at low pressure, compressor, evaporator/condenser), that would be presumably more expensive to operate (but would not need lots of water to evaporate when operating).