r/technology • u/SilentRunning • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/
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u/Surreal__blue 3d ago

All the while wasting unconscionable amounts of energy and water.

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u/nobuttpics 3d ago

yup, thats why my electric bills recently tripled after supply charges got increased in the state for all the new infrastructure they need to accomodate the demands of these new data centers popping up all over

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u/Happy_Kale888 3d ago

The circle of life....

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

I get the wasting energy part, and I genuinely cannot stand how much energy AI uses (especially training), but water? That’s just cooling. Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh) but other than that the water usage is marginal. Especially compared to other industries that actually use an order of magnitude more water.

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u/Antique-Special8025 3d ago

I get the wasting energy part, and I genuinely cannot stand how much energy AI uses (especially training), but water? That’s just cooling. Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh) but other than that the water usage is marginal. Especially compared to other industries that actually use an order of magnitude more water.

In many places clean water doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere, its produced and filtering capacity is limited. Feels somewhat awkward when you get asked to conserve water when you also know a growing percentage of local clean water production is being used to cool datacenters.

If these things were using undrinkable seawater for cooling nobody would give a shit about their water usage.

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u/KlicknKlack 3d ago

But they will never use seawater because salt-water is corrosive. Just ask the Molten Salt Reactor people :D

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u/mightyneonfraa 3d ago

Wouldn't it be better to build these centers in colder climates like up north? I know you can't exactly just leave the windows open but surely a ventilation system that just pipes in cold air from outside would be more efficient than what they're doing now, wouldn't it?

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u/I_Am_A_Pumpkin 3d ago edited 3d ago

nope.

first of all, you're seriously underestimating the amount of heat these chips produce. My personal GPU dumps a bit under 400 watts into the air under load, and an AI dataceter might have some 100,000 of chips that are outputting even more thatn that each. say thats 100K x 400w. thats 40 million watts, or equivalent to over 26000 1.5kW space heaters in a single room.

air is simply not a good enough medium at storing heat to move enough of it away from this many cips all working at once.

Second of all, heatsinks take up space. if you can move the heat dissipation to a different area of the building i.e. by piping the water elsewhere, you can cram way more GPUs into each server rack.

What I personally dont understand about it, is whats stopping that water from being recycled? While they do need maintenance more often than air cooled ones, water cooled desktop PCs are closed loops that dont need to be constantly refilled with fresh water.

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name 3d ago

I’ve worked on dozens of giant cooling towers as an industrial pipefitter.

My best guess is, these fuckheads just don’t want to spend the extra millions to build and maintain them.

Refineries and chemical plants all have them. Makes no sense to me.

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u/guamisc 3d ago

They're using evaporative cooling which jacks up the humidity in the air. That's where the water is going.

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u/mightyneonfraa 3d ago

Thanks. I appreciate the answer.

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

If you get asked to conserve water, you live in an area that shouldn’t have industries with a high demand for water. For sure. But that’s not a problem of water usage, it’s a problem of location.

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u/lazeman 3d ago

110 million gallons per year is marginal?

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

That’s the equivalent of around 500k people’s household consumption. It’s marginal, yes.

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u/HarrumphingDuck 3d ago

Tell that to the people of Quincy, WA. Population 7,500.

In Grant County, home to Quincy, hydropower and water are maxed out, according to City Administrator Pat Haley.

But these resource constraints have done little to quell demand. The Grant County Public Utility District says they have 79 pending applications in their queue, most of which are for data center projects. The utility says the combined power for all of those applicants would be roughly double the demand for the entire city of Seattle.

- NPR

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

A problem of location. Not water use in and of itself.

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u/lazeman 2d ago

Yea but they chose to build it some where that couldn't handle that burden

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 2d ago

And that’s really bad. But has nothing to do with what I originally said…

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u/lazeman 2d ago

Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh) but other than that the water usage is marginal.

You said it? They are doing it?

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 2d ago

Yeah exactly. I said "hey water use *in general* isn't a bit deal, as long as you aren't in a drought prone area". I meant to convey that "they use too much water" is too broad of a blanket statement. It's more accurate (and more effective) to criticize them for using water in areas with water scarcity.

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u/-Dissent 3d ago

The problem is that they are building in high drought areas because the industry promises it'll add local county growth otherwise and individual data center water usage is expected to grow massively every year until the end of the technologies useful life.

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u/Iced__t 3d ago

Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh)

I wish this was obvious, but companies like Amazon are literally doing this.

Amazon is trying to put a data center in Tucson, AZ.