Very fun idea. I do think this puts the water argument into a bit more perspective. Your average person should drink ~3L of water per day, or about 22mL per 11 minute average-length chat that Quili quotes on their site. It's hard to pin down exactly how much water AI uses, but something on the order of 5mL per interaction seems reasonable [1]. So the people doing this are using about 4x more water than an AI model would. Of course, it does matter what happens to that water, whether it turns into water vapor or urine and how much of that water re-enters the water cycle, but it's an interesting comparison.
This is a neat idea but some of the claims on that website seem extremely propagandistic. I'm not particularly gung ho about datacenters but if datacenters are causing water issues the solution is to shine a light on alternative technologies to solve the problem. Perhaps Chile could become a leader in building cleaner datacenters but thats not the goal I am taking from this initiative.
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biggestlou
This canard about AI and water usage really just isn't going to go away, is it?
ghm2180
Whoa. This is amazing. I think What is interesting is whats driving this: the psychologically formed habit of asking questions to bots rather than search engines.
If the median query on the internet is now and forever answered by an AI bot, humans could just as easily become really important as an "authentic" source of answers.
Is there a way to read some of the responses that i’m missing? It sounds like a lot of fun to see a what i expect is a Pictionary style human drawn image in response to a prompt. I want to see it.
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hridyaagrawal
Isn't there a bigger water crisis in Chile? datacenters are easy to blame probably
tschellenbach
Sounds like misinformation, let's compare: "The clothing and textile industry uses roughly 170 times more."
The difference is even larger if you look at the state of the art: "As of November 2026, the state of the art is direct-to-chip liquid cooling combined with closed-loop dry coolers. This allows a data center to operate with essentially zero water consumed for cooling, even for high-density AI infrastructure."
You might not want to put an older/less efficient data center in a very dry area, but other than it seems quite reasonable.
joshstrange
> Each chat lasted an average of 11’ 4
What does this mean?
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LelouBil
Really interesting. This makes me wonder if it would cost less to have human answers for like 90% of every-day AI requests.
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heckelson
The beginning of the video made me really thirsty!
rfgplk
People still don't understand that
a) datacenters don't use water for computation, they use it for cooling
b) the water isn't obliterated, it's still there
c) the water can be recycled and rereleased into the ecosystem, which it mostly is.
scotty79
Did they track their water usage for that day?
josh-wrale
Humans have neural networks, too!
pelagicAustral
Who the hell would think putting a datacentre in one of the most actively seismic countries on the planet is a good idea? I'm puzzled. Pretty good initiative other than that.
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eggsbenedict
"BECAUSE OF THAT, COUPLED WITH AN ONGOING CLIMATE CRISIS, CHILE IS FACING A SEVERE DROUGHT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL 2040."
I like the initiative as a life-affirming activity, but spreading falsehoods about water usage is not a good thing. Lying and deceiving makes the world a worse place. This sentence could just as easily read:
""BECAUSE OF [Quili], COUPLED WITH AN ONGOING CLIMATE CRISIS, CHILE IS FACING A SEVERE DROUGHT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL 2040."
Without explaining what proportion of the drought comes from the climate crisis, or the mechanism by which data centers cause drought, you could substitute almost anything for [Quili] here.
The water hype needs to go. It's caught on with people who get their news off tiktok, but we need to have better epistemic models if we want to actually make the world a better place.
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noduerme
This underscores how vastly underrated humans are by the people who are pushing this obnoxious, inhuman, alien technology onto... humans.
Very fun idea. I do think this puts the water argument into a bit more perspective. Your average person should drink ~3L of water per day, or about 22mL per 11 minute average-length chat that Quili quotes on their site. It's hard to pin down exactly how much water AI uses, but something on the order of 5mL per interaction seems reasonable [1]. So the people doing this are using about 4x more water than an AI model would. Of course, it does matter what happens to that water, whether it turns into water vapor or urine and how much of that water re-enters the water cycle, but it's an interesting comparison.
[1] https://www.seangoedecke.com/water-impact-of-ai/
This is a neat idea but some of the claims on that website seem extremely propagandistic. I'm not particularly gung ho about datacenters but if datacenters are causing water issues the solution is to shine a light on alternative technologies to solve the problem. Perhaps Chile could become a leader in building cleaner datacenters but thats not the goal I am taking from this initiative.
This canard about AI and water usage really just isn't going to go away, is it?
Whoa. This is amazing. I think What is interesting is whats driving this: the psychologically formed habit of asking questions to bots rather than search engines.
If the median query on the internet is now and forever answered by an AI bot, humans could just as easily become really important as an "authentic" source of answers.
This is cool. It's worth noting that there has been a much wider Chilean water crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_water_crisis + https://www.bnamericas.com/en/interviews/chile-has-no-time-t...
Is there a way to read some of the responses that i’m missing? It sounds like a lot of fun to see a what i expect is a Pictionary style human drawn image in response to a prompt. I want to see it.
Isn't there a bigger water crisis in Chile? datacenters are easy to blame probably
Sounds like misinformation, let's compare: "The clothing and textile industry uses roughly 170 times more."
The difference is even larger if you look at the state of the art: "As of November 2026, the state of the art is direct-to-chip liquid cooling combined with closed-loop dry coolers. This allows a data center to operate with essentially zero water consumed for cooling, even for high-density AI infrastructure."
You might not want to put an older/less efficient data center in a very dry area, but other than it seems quite reasonable.
> Each chat lasted an average of 11’ 4
What does this mean?
Really interesting. This makes me wonder if it would cost less to have human answers for like 90% of every-day AI requests.
The beginning of the video made me really thirsty!
People still don't understand that
a) datacenters don't use water for computation, they use it for cooling
b) the water isn't obliterated, it's still there
c) the water can be recycled and rereleased into the ecosystem, which it mostly is.
Did they track their water usage for that day?
Humans have neural networks, too!
Who the hell would think putting a datacentre in one of the most actively seismic countries on the planet is a good idea? I'm puzzled. Pretty good initiative other than that.
"BECAUSE OF THAT, COUPLED WITH AN ONGOING CLIMATE CRISIS, CHILE IS FACING A SEVERE DROUGHT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL 2040."
I like the initiative as a life-affirming activity, but spreading falsehoods about water usage is not a good thing. Lying and deceiving makes the world a worse place. This sentence could just as easily read:
""BECAUSE OF [Quili], COUPLED WITH AN ONGOING CLIMATE CRISIS, CHILE IS FACING A SEVERE DROUGHT EXPECTED TO LAST UNTIL 2040."
Without explaining what proportion of the drought comes from the climate crisis, or the mechanism by which data centers cause drought, you could substitute almost anything for [Quili] here.
The water hype needs to go. It's caught on with people who get their news off tiktok, but we need to have better epistemic models if we want to actually make the world a better place.
This underscores how vastly underrated humans are by the people who are pushing this obnoxious, inhuman, alien technology onto... humans.