I learned today that every AI prompt uses about 16 ounces of clean water. It was really depressing.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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If you think that's depressing, wait until you find out that it's basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.
spoiler
Most sources agree that we use about 4 trillion cubic meters of water every year worldwide (Although, this stat is from 2015 most likely, and so it will be bigger now). In 2022, using the stats here Microsoft used 1.7 billion gallons per year, and Google 5.56 billion gallons per year. In cubic meters that's only 23.69 million cubic meters. That's only 0.00059% of the worldwide water usage. Meanwhile agriculture uses on average 70% of a country's daily fresh water.
Even if we just look at the US, since that's where Google and Microsoft are based, they use 322 billion gallons of water every day, resulting in about 445 billion cubic meters per year, that's still 0.00532%. So you can have 187 more Googles and Microsofts before you even top a single percentage. _
And as others have pointed out the water isn't gone, there's some cyclicality in how the water is used.
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fac##ok thrash fediverse better /hj