I've seen people who hate AI instantly become defensive as soon as someone brings up the water usage for a kg of beef. It's selective outrage.
I don't like whataboutism, but this isn't whataboutism because the meat industry requires way more water per capita like you pointed out. You have to create products twice, once for feed and once to raise the cows.
Why not treat both as bad instead of pointing to whataboutism to make a point?
Because some causes are significantly worse than others. If you want to have a big impact, you start with the big levers.
I'll give you an even better example than meat: golf courses in the US consume 2 to 100 times as much water as US datacenters depending on how you calculate.
How many golf-course-water-saving initiatives have you seen? Have they even tried anything at all?
AI data centres are a thing we are choosing to add, we could just not do that.
What benefit is the AI summary on search giving me Vs the actual search for a start.
Have a look at a graph of meat consumption in the US. We are also adding to that. That's my point, we don't need to add to meat consumption, we can make reductions.
what benefit is it giving to the search engine is what you have to ask.
if you dont leave the page they get more ad-money
Eating more meat is a thing we are choosing to add, we could just not do that.
Flying more is a thing we are choosing to do, we could just not do that.
and what benefit does a golf course have to anyone? Unlike golf courses, AI summary is used by pretty much everyone. And if you dont think this is true, then you live in a bubble.
The meat industry helps keep humans alive however, whereas the AI industry does not. I think the argument between the two needs to factor in the actual reason for the emissions.
Eating meat is ecologically unsustainable but it has an actual reason for it to exist.
Eating meat is not necessary by any means to 'be alive' in fact many studies show that a plant based diet is better for longevity. So, in the same way that AI is not 'necessary' to do a job, it's not necessary to eat meat. It's a matter of taste and societal conformity/norms.
We didn't get to where we are as a species without it.
We didn't get to where we are as a species without violently killing each other, or forcing people do to work for us, or killing our young, etc. Doesn't mean we should keep doing it.
Friends have described scenarios where ai has literally saved their life. Like, they were trying to commit suicide, they had no one human to talk to, but they did have AI.