this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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I learned today that every AI prompt uses about 16 ounces of clean water. It was really depressing.
It doesn’t use water in the sense that it is consuming it. It “uses” water in the sense that it is temporarily in a datacenter, gets a little hot, and then leaves the datacenter. I don’t even think a lot of datacenters use actual drinking water, instead taking water directly from a river, warming it slightly, and putting it back in said river.
Not to say I like AI, or think it’s a good thing. But this phrase that’s been going around just bugs me, because it’s really misleading. We should be focused on the ridiculous amount of energy it consumes, not the water it temporarily uses.
From what I learned the problem is they don't put it back in the river, it's just in the coolant systems and stays there. And they won't disclose how much they are actually using.
Well it has to go somewhere, you can’t just take in water forever with nowhere for it to go. So either it’s non-potable water being returned to its source, or it’s closed loop. In either case, it’s not really a problem.
There are two types of cooling systems: Closed Loop and Once Through.
This response consumed 16 oz of water but I am not sure in which manner.
If you think that's depressing, wait until you find out that it's basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.
spoiler
Most sources agree that we use about 4 trillion cubic meters of water every year worldwide (Although, this stat is from 2015 most likely, and so it will be bigger now). In 2022, using the stats here Microsoft used 1.7 billion gallons per year, and Google 5.56 billion gallons per year. In cubic meters that's only 23.69 million cubic meters. That's only 0.00059% of the worldwide water usage. Meanwhile agriculture uses on average 70% of a country's daily fresh water.Even if we just look at the US, since that's where Google and Microsoft are based, they use 322 billion gallons of water every day, resulting in about 445 billion cubic meters per year, that's still 0.00532%. So you can have 187 more Googles and Microsofts before you even top a single percentage. _
And as others have pointed out the water isn't gone, there's some cyclicality in how the water is used.