A disturbing thing that I have learnt today: South Africa is home to 4 AI data centres.
My country is already experiencing water and electricity shortages.
We have something called loadshedding, where areas will have their electricity turned off every day, for up to 13,5 hours per day, depending on how much electricity they need to save. Several times a year, we will experience *days* of no electricity, due to our damaged and badly maintained power grid. The longest I recall was a period of 3,5-4 days. This is on top of loadshedding, as even if you have gone days without electricity, they will still shut you off to reduce the load.
A few years ago, we had a drought where parts of the country had almost run out of water - the rains came 90 days before the water had to be completely shut off in some areas. In the places where we still had (limited, almost finished) amounts of water, we had to collect and send bottles of water to areas without. Even when we have floods (which are happening in *some* areas, while others still face drought), clean water is inaccessible for many people as the floodwater contaminate our drinkable water. In my area, we often have burst pipes, wasting water and causing us to often go for days without running water - one area had no running water for at least six months, if not more. We have no water at least once a month, if I were to make a guess.
South Africa may face 'watershedding', which will be the water equivalent of loadshedding, where areas will have their water deliberately shut off for periods on time - apparently Gauteng has already implemented this.
If you've been on Tumblr, you've doubtless already seen the countless posts discussing the water and power consumption of AI. With my country's problems and these four data centres, I dread to think the problems we will face regarding water and power, especially if - or rather when - the usage of these increases.
I have encountered Americans who cry just because they merely had an eleven hour power outage. It's the only power outage they've had in years. Just one. My country faces much worse on a much more regular basis but we must host international AI datacentres, gobbling our scarce power and water. It's just. Disgusting.
This was just meant to be a bit of a rant, I suppose. Take from it what you will. However, I do think that if you have compassion for my country's people (which includes *the* oldest group of people in the world, the San) and our wildlife (including critically endangered animals such as the black rhino) then you would not use generative AI, especially if it's for something as petty as a search summary (which don't even give reliable information), generating writing or images (plagiarising and stealing other peoples' work) or to 'chat' with a bot.
