Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10267315
Initial research shows that AI has a significant water footprint. It uses water both for cooling the servers that power its computations and for producing the energy it consumes. As AI becomes more integrated into our societies, its water footprint will inevitably grow.
The growth of ChatGPT and similar AI models has been hailed as “the new Google.” But while a single Google search requires half a millilitre of water in energy, ChatGPT consumes 500 millilitres of water for every five to 50 prompts.
surely nestle and coke are using orders of magnitude more. Also don’t many Americans drink bottled water when tap water is completely fine in most areas? I read somewhere it was a weird cultural quirk, you know like refusing to use the metric system. I’m not saying shouldn’t check AIs footprint, but water seems a werid one to go after.