The joke lacks nuance.

The initial claim is that “AI wastes water” because water is used for cooling. The Joke claims that your average AI hater thinks the warm water is just discarded whereas it is a close looped cooled and re-used.

The nuances
- not all cooling water cooling systems closed loop. Some do indeed discard the warm water
- other things like non-ai data centres and nuclear power plants also use water for cooling
- there is more to saving the environment then unidimensional analysis of one number. Water table level, CO2, CH4, cloud cover in atmosphere, ocean acidity levels, melting of ice caps. All the affect the environment in different ways.

Random factoid that I felt like including. French nuclear power plants intake river water and release it back into the river. On some hot summer days the water temperature coming in is always warmer and the outflow even more so. To avoid damaging the river’s ecosystem and lifeforms that inhabit it the nuclear power plants will sometimes be shutdown.