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AI’s excessive water consumption threatens to drown out its environmental contributions, researchers say (theconversation.com)
submitted 7 months ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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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.

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[-] SolarMech@slrpnk.net 4 points 7 months ago

No. People are tracking useable water supplies. If it gets out of that, we don't care what happens to it.

We're draining aquifers to give people and industry drinkable, useable water (no matter how we feel about that). The water "still existing" somewhere else is an entirely pedantic point, and a huge waste of everyone's time.

this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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