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In this world, we obey the law of thermodynamics. I'd love to know how this 3 bottles of water is "consumed". Because more than likely, the water is simply being used for cooling, which doesn't consume it at all, it just makes it warmer.
Yeah the article is disingenuous at best. There are many things wrong with generative AI, but this is just a lousy approach.
If I make a PC, put in a water cooling loop, and use it to run an LLM - sure, water is circulating, but that water isn't just vanishing lol.
My friend, you are naive at best if you think AI data centers are using closed loop water cooling. Look up evaporative cooling towers. It's "consumed" in the sense that it is evaporated.
I specifically avoided saying they did because I wasn't knowledgeable on the topic. But I agree, I could equally be accused of being disingenuous by phrasing it in a way that could lead people to assume they use closed loops.
I did look those up, and while evaporation cooling isn't the only method used, it also doesn't evaporate all the water each pass, only a portion of it (granted "a portion" is all I found at a quick look, which isn't actually useful).
I do agree though, the water usage is excessive, and when though that water only "changes forms", it's still removes it from a water source and only some of it may make its way back in.
and it’s still absolute crap… the heat produced by 100 words of GPT inference is negligible - it CERTAINLY doesn’t take 3L of water evaporating to cool it
Do you have a study to publish? Because they do.
It consumes the resource of "purified, available water" which is consumed as it is no longer purified or unavailable (if evaporated). The same way nothing ever "consumes" energy, it just makes it unusable.
The water simply vanishes, consumed by the AI's ever growing need for H Y D R A T I O N. /s