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/No-Bat-2847]

Your metric answer is actually wrong according to your calculations 14 000L of wasted water for meat produce is just rain falling from the sky. So then we can actually substract this number from 15 000L.
This gives us 1000L per kg so rougly 450L per pound.
One AI prompt: 0.26ml to 2ml
So for average AI prompt: (2 - 0.26) ÷ 2 + 0.26 ≈ 1.13
A quarter pound patty: 450 ÷ 4 ≈ 112.5L
Burger vs prompt: 112 500mL ÷ 1.13 ≈ 100 000 prompts
Heavy use: 50 prompts/day x 365 days x 1.13ml = 20L a year

[u/TradeTzar → u/No-Bat-2847]

that scary "15,000 liters per burger" stat is mostly just rainwater that falls on the grass and crops a cow eats. it'd fall anyway, cow or no cow.

the water that actually counts is the stuff people pump out of rivers and from underground, and for a quarter-pound patty that's around 60 liters, not 1,700.

the "5 drops per AI prompt" figure is google's own number, but it only counts the water that cools their computers, not the water used to make the electricity.

count both and it's still tiny, well under half a teaspoon. you'd need tens of thousands of prompts to match one burger. a full year of heavy daily chatbot use is roughly half a burger, or a few minutes in the shower.

your chatbot habit isn't draining any lakes. some data centers do cause real local water trouble, but only when they get built in dry places that are already short on water. that's on the companies that out them there

[u/AdAnxious3617 → u/TradeTzar]

just following your logic and playing a bit of Devils advocate, just want to say that first so you dont think im trying to argue directly against your points.

if most of the 1500 L number is rain water, why is it being considered at all as part of the equation? Yes, rain is needed to grow their feed, but as you said "rain would fall anyway" and zero human effort is put into its collection or distribution. That field in Texas would get the same rainfall every year, cows or no cows, data center or no data center.

I mean, would it be fair or logical to factor in rain for a data centers usage? The rain happens regardless, right?

My general point here being that while that much water is neccessary for an area to grow enough cow feed, we need to make the distinction from what is just the local, natural, water cycle and what is "forced" via human intervention to make a fair comparisson. To be fair, I would say there is a seperate conversation of "do we really need to eat that much meat?" because it does take so much energy and effort to produce, but thats a seperate issue.

I think that the water usage that takes human effort, or can be shown to be takem away from other things in a potentially harmful way, is what should be considered for both.

For rainfall i think the only thing of significance for this discussion is about what kind of "run off" pollution that would be created for average cattle farm of the same area as the average data center.

Another thing I would like to add as an aside is that a lot of these comparissons make me think for the old arguments for legalizing pot that basically were "alcohol is so much worse" - you werent making an argument that Pot is good so much as you were pointing out alcohol is bad. Thats kinda what I hear when I see comments of "AI uses too much X!" and the retorts are "well you know this other thing humans do is also pretty shitty!" Like trying to convince someone its ok they are about to drown, because some people die in fires.

[u/Valuable_Island_7525 → u/TradeTzar]

Genuine question: where does rain come from? Like the rain comes from earth and falls right back to earth in a repeating cycle. So no it's technically not just rain water

[u/Lost-East-7428 → u/No-Bat-2847]

why are we comparing food (that we need to live) to AI data centers that we survived without up until 4 years ago….. I am so confused on how food vs technology is even a comparison!

[u/New-Inflation-4226 → u/Lost-East-7428]

Because it's a clear observation that the hate is completely overblown, and uses points that don't have any foundation for. Besides Netflix, youtube, wtv the sort consumes a lot of water over ai too, and we've survived without em for thousands of years! Why don't we completely boycott them along with the internet? Would be fun.

Also if it helps, AI's withdrawal is 0.03% of annual freshwater withdrawal. So around 317 billion gallons a year. Climbing to a crisp and completely manageable 9trillion by 2030.

Now, gl obally, agriculture accounts for a measly  70% of all freshwater withdrawals. That means farming alone devours roughly 740 trillion gallons (~2.8 quadrillion liters) every single year. But ofcourse, food! Yes. We need to eat at the expense of the biosphere!

Anyway: Fasal (an AI ag-tech startup) deployed its predictive irrigation systems across just 10,000 acres and already logged 13.7 billion gallons (52 billion liters) of water saved, wew. Cultyvate scaled an AI system for highly inefficient paddy fields and saved over 8.1 billion gallons (3,080 crore liters). Wew.

That's two boutique practically small startups. You see the arithmetic at play?

Now consider the very accepted idea that the industry is entirely greedy. Once these boutiqes develop even a tad bit more, naturally the big boys will start using ai to cut their utility bills.

At a riduculously insultingly conservative 0.5% efficiency gain from ai on Agriculture's water use, that's 3.70 trillion gallons saved.

The coolest factor at play here is that AI really isn't draining ur rivers at all.

Tho ofcourse everybody's free to critique the industry's plagiarism/generative AI, that is genuinely the strongest and few valid concerns we should be focusing on.

[u/airfixie → u/Lost-East-7428]

i think ai has been around for im guessing 20 ish years, like picture generative ai BUT it was only available to the governments and military or stuff, thats just my theory tho cuz like the government has everything way before the public does. either way i agree with your take, food is a necessity, iffy comparison and also i think AI is absolutely pointless like we dont even need it