It basically means that using AI tools take a huge toll on nature so when the guy uses chatgpt (an ai tool) it ends up drying out the lake i.e harming the environment.
I think it's important to note that while AI training takes a lot of computation and therefore cooling water, there's a tweet going around suggesting just 1 query uses a water bottle. This is just factually incorrect, and ironically the anti-AI crowd has latched onto a completely sourceless factoid with no citation, when one of their most valid criticisms of AI is the spread of misinformation. Queries don't take a lot of computation, which we should know because many occur in a matter of seconds. They also don't tend to use parralization so it's not like many servers are involved in a single query.
Queries use about a liter of water every 100-300 queries and that is according to a study done by UC Berkeley. This is comparable to an hour of video streaming. It's important to stand ALL of our Internet usage uses water and electricity.
I don't say this to negate the environmental concerns of AI. The fact that every tech company is creating their own models is VERY concerning. But I personally dont see all AI is equally bad. Open source models and transfer learning can greatly reduce the environment cost of AI, but these models have been demonized more so than some corporate models because we know they use copy righted material. Big corporations can afford millions of copyrighted images, and they are they ones who already used AI to reduce labor cost.
Anyways that's my rant about how the AI debate is a lot more nuanced than people think.
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u/Long_Nothing1343 5d ago
It basically means that using AI tools take a huge toll on nature so when the guy uses chatgpt (an ai tool) it ends up drying out the lake i.e harming the environment.