I stopped using AI-generated art on this Substack a few months ago. I liked it: it was fun, it let me be creative without taking the trouble to learn how to draw, the product was sometimes rather good (though AI has a really hard time with spatial relationships).
An artist-friend frowned at me, reminding me that real artists have to live too, and AI should not be encouraged. He also called to my attention the fact that AI consumes an inordinate amount of natural resources, which I guess I knew in theory.
But it comes home to you now and then how serious that is.
According to San Antonio Current, two data-centers in San Antonio consumed 463 million gallons of scarce water in 2023-2024. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens are limited to watering their lawns once a week and are subject to further drought controls.
The Austin Chronicle further reports on the Stargate data-center of Sam Altman. It will consume enough power for 750,000 homes, in a state that already has a very troubled power-grid. That’s going to generate a lot of heat, which will be cooled by (you guessed it) water. A friend who’s a leader in AI-development recently told me that Texas water usage has doubled because of AI. I can’t confirm it, but he’d know.
The Legislature did pass a bill earlier this year that permits it to redirect power away from data-centers and towards residents in an emergency. Whether they will or not is an open question. The Legislature has taken no action yet to protect ordinary Texans’ right to the state’s water.
Texas has taken a hands-off approach to regulating energy providers and controlling ground-water use for well-moneyed and well-connected projects like Stargate. As The Austin Chronicle says:
Energy and water are what make data centers run, usually 24/7 once they’re turned on. Data centers need water to cool their processing servers, which is actually a more difficult task in hotter states like Texas. They could use air conditioning to do this, but energy is generally a more expensive commodity than water.
Anyway, it’s a gathering problem. Texas groundwater is, in many areas, in some serious straits. It’s not an unsolvable problem; but it’s so far unsolved, and until it is, it constitutes a potential crisis for Texans.
But the Texas Legislature and the Governor of Texas have never met a huge business project they didn’t love. If a few normies suffer, well, it’s just the price of business. An old song, that.
The rest of us without enormous capital and political connections will just have to make do. It’s a billionaires’ world. We just live in it.
