AI’s excessive water consumption threatens to drown out its environmental contributions, researchers say
AI’s excessive water consumption threatens to drown out its environmental contributions, researchers say
Artificial intelligence promises revolutionary solutions to global challenges, but the water costs to produce and power AI hardware and infrastructure may exceed the benefits.
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.
So when computer systems use water, it's typically in a closed cooling loop. The water is heated by the computer components and then cooled in a radiator before being returned to the computer components to absorb more heat and the cycle repeats.
So why do these articles always read like it's consuming water in a way that eliminates it from existence?
As far as I'm aware they're not taking water and turning it into something else like concrete, so what exactly is happening that it's reducing our fresh water supply on Earth?Data center water cooling isn't a closed loop. They generally don't use it like PC water cooling. There are exceptions, but servers are typically air cooled.
What they did is look for a less energy intensive way to cool the air than traditional air conditioning. So they turned to evaporative cooling, and also misting the incoming air. This reduced their energy use, but at the expense of water use.
It shows up in the inflow and outflow of water:
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sip-or-guzzle-heres-how-googles-data-centers-use-water
Most of the overall amount of "operational" water that Google used in 2021 is related to these data centers; it withdrew 6.3 billion gallons during that fiscal year, according to its 2022 Environmental Report. Of that amount, 1.7 billion was discharged.
They're evaporating away a lot more water than they return.
If you're taking water and putting it in a closed loop, you're effectively removing it from the natural water cycle until you remove it from said closed loop, no?
I agree the articles make it sound more like they are just burning water out of existence lol.
I guess they put in perspective the scarcity of water and the increased usage of AI in the near future...
Right, but the way the article is worded it makes it sound like they're adding 500 mL of water to the loop every single time you enter a prompt.
Right. Makes not sense at all, but people gobble it up the same way they blame bitcoin for the environment because the narrative is that it uses a lot of power. It’s not about the power, it is about how carbon intensive the generation method is. Such a great distraction.
AI has environmental contributions?
The article seems to conflate AI, Farm specific AI, and technological advancements. They call out a lot of ways that tech advancements and targeted applications of AI can help save water / find new solutions. It's lightweight on the fidnigns, but whatever. They then go to talk about data centers using a lot of water. It's related, but not really the same thing.
Once we start using it to optimize infrastructure, architecture, logistics etc
And what's the number for crypto mining?
Depends on the "crypto"
What has this to do with the topic?
That's why they build data centers in places where there's loads of water.
surely nestle and coke are using orders of magnitude more. Also don't many Americans drink bottled water when tap water is completely fine in most areas? I read somewhere it was a weird cultural quirk, you know like refusing to use the metric system. I'm not saying shouldn't check AIs footprint, but water seems a werid one to go after.
Rain World moment