Every time you use ChatGPT, half a litre of water goes to waste

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/every-time-you-use-chatgpt-half-a-cup-of-water-goes-to-waste-20241128-p5kubq.html

by MetaKnowing

11 comments

  1. Also, every time you use it, half of your brain goes to waste.

  2. Someone tell those vegans who keep brigading subs with that AI-generated veganhorizon substack.

  5. Data centers for ai are being built all around the great lakes and the domestic population will not see a benefit. We just get depleted aquifers and higher electricity bills.

  6. The water doesn’t disappear, it gets recycled. That’s like saying every time you shower you waste water. I don’t think it’s a good use of energy either, it just mischaracterizes the issue.

  7. Water doesn’t go to waste, it’s naturally recycleable. It’s not like water to cool servers just disappears or get’s polluted by cooling servers. Minerals that collect in the towers are minerals that were in the water to begin with.

    The only down side really is if the datacenter is put somewhere with a water shortage, the initial surge of the datacenter can stress the local water supply…. But in an area like the great lakes… That isn’t going to happen.

    Water is reused, or it evaporates where it eventually comes back down as fresh rain.

    You literally can’t destroy water, unless you are splitting it via electrolysis which is not part of cooling datacenters.

  8. Half a litre != half a cup, unless you’re a Stein-only Household.

  9. I struggle to believe that, most water cooling is closed loop.

  10. This is misleading. Once an AI model is trained, using it requires less energy than loading a web page. The problem is the race between companies trying to beat the other, modeling better and better AI’s as fast as they can. Most of these similar AI models will not get a lot of use.

    This is like building lots of apartment complexes, most of which will never really be lived in.

    Clarifying because we need regulation but we also need to compete against weaponization of AI by bad actors. This simplification of the problem just makes it harder to solve an already hard problem. It is being pushed by artists and industries that are about to be wiped out in order to slow the progress. (Another real problem.)

  11. And what happens to the slightly warmer water exactly? Does it turn to steam and evaporate to the atmosphere?

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