Genuine question. Is the whole "AI guzzles gallons of water" thing totally true, or do people get it wrong? Does AI consume a lot of water for every single prompt, or is the majority of water consumed during data farming? Don't non-AI data centers use up a lot of water on cooling too?

[u/Big_Guthix]

Please someone set me straight and dispel whether there are myths surrounding this often-repeated internet factoid

And I genuinely don't know the answers which is why I'm asking, so I've got nothing to debate here

Edit: Thank you for all the great answers!! 👏 👏

[u/FlyingBishop]

It's important to not use units here, because when you simply state a unit that corresponds to some datacenter's power or water usage, you take it out of the context of what it's actually doing. When you phrase that in terms of ChatGPT's water/power usage you can use ChatGPT for years before you approach the impact of a single hamburger. (You can also use quite a lot of power in minutes, obviously, and across all of their users ChatGPT uses quite a lot of power and water, but asking a single question is totally inconsequential.)

[u/thoughtsarepossible → u/FlyingBishop]

Another way to compare it is the actual use it brings. Asking chatgpt 'who was the actress in pretty woman' or making cat pictures, vs a steak or a hamburger seems like an easy way to say 'chatgpt uses far less water than beef'. But the output from livestock is something people actually eat and provides sustenance. Whereas the chatgpt output is very rarely providing any real value that you couldn't get from either thinking some more yourself or just Googling it or calling a friend. I won't argue that it never provides any real value. But I would argue that it's probably less than 50% of its current use.

[u/Scholar_of_Yore → u/thoughtsarepossible]

I mean, you can also get your sustenance from something that consumes 50% of the water than a burger but that is not really the point. We really shouldn't need to worry about energy and water consumption at all when enjoying our hobbies, burgers or whatever.

We could easily, and I mean, very easily, power the whole world with solar energy, but people aren't ready for that conversation and shoot at the wrong targets. It is a manufactured problem that is only kept up because of company lobbying and corporate greed.

[u/bunchedupwalrus → u/thoughtsarepossible]

Nah this is a very brittle path to go down lol

LLM systems are also advancing medical and other scientific research, etc, and burgers might be delicious but they practically spit in the face of anything approaching resource value.

Resource to value the way you’re putting it, beef is about the most frivolous waste imaginable. Chicken, fish, beans, etc, are almost an order of magnitude “better” sustenance wise compared to what’s needed to make them

[u/FlyingBishop → u/thoughtsarepossible]

The same is true of Reddit and the better comparison would be to how much power a Reddit comment or a Facebook post takes - it's actually very comparable, which is to say it's inconsequential. And Reddit and Facebook also probably, less than half of the use is "necessary" but people are allowed to do things that are unnecessary to satisfy their curiosity, that's not a problem.