Comment by topaz0

This is a big oversimplification. First, the 20% (of all datacenter usage being LLMs) is based on 2024 estimates, while meanwhile all of the LLM players are putting billions of dollars into building more and larger datacenters. This number undoubtedly already gives an underestimate for total LLM power usage, and if all of the planned datacenters actually materialize (which is a big if), it will be an underestimate by an order of magnitude or maybe two.

Second, water issues are localized, and building datacenters in dry areas (like Texas), where aquifers are already being depleted, is going to be an issue there, even if it's a drop in the bucket of the great lakes or whatever.