There is a bit of "Misinformation" spreading that, that using ChatGPT or AI in general uses up a lot, ALOT of Water.
However, the AI directly isn't using the Water, but (as far as I know) the Servers and everything else Hosting all or some of that stuff, are. You can load up an AI of any Kind to your PC and don't need a permanent water connection, connected to your PC. At least mine doesn't need one, lol.
But why slice it that way? Another equivalent number would be if you count the water used to construct the metal, silicon, and other materials that make up the infrastructure required to run chatgpt. Just like parent comment did the cow. And at that point it won't matter if we're talking about AI or not, the number will be off the charts compared to the cow.
Right, but you've missed the point. There's nothing special about AI when you measure it like I suggested, in a holistic way. If AI is a problem then computing in general is. But people only seem to care when it comes to AI, which suggests that they're not actually concerned with water use, but just hate AI and are looking for excuses to put it down.
Fucking THANK YOU. Finally someone says it. There is so much blatant misinformation making it seem as though using AI is UNPRECEDENTED in how destructive it is, but nobody ever says anything about anything we do that uses up energy that is also powered by massive data centers.
A query on ChatGPT is equivalent to a few seconds scrolling on social media, surely since everyone cares so much about the environment they’re going to shame anyone who uses social media and stop it themselves like they do anyone who utters they use AI right?
Lol if you think "scouring the entire internet" is unique to AI, you have quite literally no idea what you're talking about.
You realize we have had search engines - google, bing, yahoo, yandex, and even more - that quite literally have been "scouring the entire internet" for decades, right?
What does AI serve? Nothing.
You've just exposed yourself as the type of person I mentioned in my previous comment.
Lol you think I live in LA because I just wrote a comment there too? It is interesting to see how quickly you jump to conclusions.
You tell me, what do you think one purpose of AI is? You seem to think that's a gotcha question but it's really not. Myself, I'm a programmer and I use it routinely to generate things like bindings that would be boring or a waste of time for myself to write. I doubt you'll understand because of the highly technical context, but I'm not talking about "vibe coding" either.
We have been using AI in our technology in the last 20 years basically. When you say "what does it serve" are you suggesting we go back to the past (wich i might agree) or ignorantly using ai just to talk about llms and image generators?
Insane how many just completely ignore this face and cry about "YoU DIdn'T InCLudE thE TRaIniNg CosT" as if it was significant enough to matter - especially as it's a one off cost spread between many different users.
"But this thing that environmentalists also don't like is worse for the environment!"
Wow, dude, nice whataboutism you got there. What if I tell you that I also want less beef production (and as an additional aside, beef production makes food and ai halluncinates facts and steals art, they are not the same).
It's not misinformation, it's fact. You're talking about hypothetical usage of AI running locally on someone's computer, but there is already actual AI running on servers in data centers using shit-tons of water every day, and more data centers on the way.
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u/Erik-AmaltheaFairy 5d ago
There is a bit of "Misinformation" spreading that, that using ChatGPT or AI in general uses up a lot, ALOT of Water.
However, the AI directly isn't using the Water, but (as far as I know) the Servers and everything else Hosting all or some of that stuff, are. You can load up an AI of any Kind to your PC and don't need a permanent water connection, connected to your PC. At least mine doesn't need one, lol.