Comment by no-name-here
2 hours ago
Doesn’t desalination require very large amounts of electricity, something that AI also requires large amounts of? Are we at the point where we are no longer concerned with electricity demand outstripping supply? (Let alone the pollution caused by in-place power plants - are we near to getting rid of those?)
Solar is incredibly cheap and it's a perfect match for desalination because you can scale the water flow based on available power. And the places that need it the most are deserts with a lot of sunshine and empty land. We're at a point where generating power is almost never the issue.
The actual problem is making the desalination tech itself cheap and easy to maintain so poor countries can afford it. Right now it's only a large scale thing in relatively rich and tech advanced states like Saudi or Israel.