To clarify, I’m mainly just sceptical that water-scarcity is a significant consideration wrt the trajectory of transformative AI. I’m not here arguing against water-scarcity (or data poisoning) as an important cause to focus altruistic efforts on.
Hunches/reasons that I’m sceptical of water as a consideration for transformative AI:
I doubt water will be a bottleneck to scaling
My doubt here mainly just stems from a poorly-argued & uncertain intuition about other factors being more relevant. If I were to look into this more, I would try to find some basic numbers about:
How much water goes into the maintenance of data centers relative to other things fungible water-sources are used for?
What proportion of a data center’s total expenditures are used to purchase water?
I’m not sure how these things work, so don’t take my own scepticism as grounds to distrust your own (perhaps-better-informed) model of these things.
Assuming scaling is bottlenecked by water, I think great-power conflict are unlikely to be caused by it
Assuming conflicts happen due to water-bottleneck, I don’t think this will significantly influence the long-term outcome of transformative AI
Note: I’ll read if you respond, but I’m unlikely to respond in turn, since I’m trying to prioritize other things atm. Either way, thanks for an idea I hadn’t considered before! : )
To clarify, I’m mainly just sceptical that water-scarcity is a significant consideration wrt the trajectory of transformative AI. I’m not here arguing against water-scarcity (or data poisoning) as an important cause to focus altruistic efforts on.
Hunches/reasons that I’m sceptical of water as a consideration for transformative AI:
I doubt water will be a bottleneck to scaling
My doubt here mainly just stems from a poorly-argued & uncertain intuition about other factors being more relevant. If I were to look into this more, I would try to find some basic numbers about:
How much water goes into the maintenance of data centers relative to other things fungible water-sources are used for?
What proportion of a data center’s total expenditures are used to purchase water?
I’m not sure how these things work, so don’t take my own scepticism as grounds to distrust your own (perhaps-better-informed) model of these things.
Assuming scaling is bottlenecked by water, I think great-power conflict are unlikely to be caused by it
Assuming conflicts happen due to water-bottleneck, I don’t think this will significantly influence the long-term outcome of transformative AI
Note: I’ll read if you respond, but I’m unlikely to respond in turn, since I’m trying to prioritize other things atm. Either way, thanks for an idea I hadn’t considered before! : )