alt Hacker NewsThere was massive controversy about that so I don't know how good counterexample it's that. Unless the argument is "we already waste a lot why would you care about wasting more??" Which is not a great argument.
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It's not explicitly a great argument, but it's an excellent premise to set.
Because this whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with pollution or water. It has to do with people hating AI and looking to portray it negatively. The proof is that if they actually cared, there's a million better places to put their efforts into.
It is not an honest issue and it deserves no attention. The vast, vast majority of people talking about how terrible this is for the environment deserve to be ignored first, scorned later.
The point is that we should start by working on the bigger waste. If agriculture represents 1000x the consumption of AI, even cutting the AI water usage by half would have the less impact than reducing agriculture water usage by 0.02%
The point of the counterexample is a huge component of US agriculture, massively dwarfing data centers in water use, doesn't serve the core needs proposed by the top comment.