Also to compare growing food with the totally optional, not useful in the slightest, LLMs that somehow demand local populaces bend to their will for reasons that never seem to benefit them is just bonkers level of self-blinding when it comes to populations absolutely despising big tech, big tech leadership, and big tech practices.
This mania might finally cause the software industry to become a highly regulated with licenses similar to that of other engineering disciplines due to amount of optional destruction they have decided to unleash upon on the planet in such a short time frame.
See? Middle-Eastern investors are growing alfalfa in the western desert using legal allotments of water! That is so much worse than what we’re doing! Go after them!
They can both be using an egregious amount of water for silly purposes.
The other part of the water debate is also the pollution different systems create. Many data centres went in with the promise of closed-loop systems but changed half-way through construction and couldn’t be stopped.
I think it’s more complicated than, “they’re wrong, it’s just hype.”
Your argument makes sense if ai datacenters were using something close to like alfafa farming but the difference between them is soo massive it does not make sense.
Reducing pollution is a much better problem to fight for
So, on the matter of scale: there likely isn't a cap on water use of these datacenters. Both the heat emission and usage levels for these systems will likely go up unless there is a fundamental technical breakthrough.
On the matter of utility: As a sibling of GP mentioned, the utility of food is clear.
On the matter of polution: I am not remotely read on waste water and contamination due to industrial agriculture. Is this also something where the judgmental scale is tipped in favor of food production vs cooling systems?