News Just Five ChatGPT Queries Can Use 16oz of Water, Say Researchers

[Admin]

Data centers are causing environmental stress not just due to power demands, but water usage too, with AI services like ChatGPT ramping up consumption.

Just Five ChatGPT Queries Can Use 16oz of Water, Say Researchers : Read more

 

[usertests]

Water is neither created nor destroyed.

 

[vehekos]

This is so ridiculously absurd that has to be fake.
Not even a million queries should consume that much water.

 

[ctchewy]

Haven't Microsoft and Google every heard of recirculating water. You know, use water to cool the servers and then use a heat exchanger to cool the water, then send it back to cool the servers? This seems like a rather easy fix to the water consumption problem. Not only that, but you use the waste heat from the heat exchanger to power a turbine and produce electricity for the data center too.

 

[Giroro]

Haven't Microsoft and Google every heard of recirculating water. You know, use water to cool the servers and then use a heat exchanger to cool the water, then send it back to cool the servers? This seems like a rather easy fix to the water consumption problem. Not only that, but you use the waste heat from the heat exchanger to power a turbine and produce electricity for the data center too.

Servers often use evaporative cooling to keep the air cool.
And in order to make those swamp coolers more effective, they like to build giant server farms in the desert where the air is hotter and water is scarce.

 

[Giroro]

I would use ChatGPT less if Google would fix their increasingly useless and apparently easily exploited search algorithms.
If it's a choice between manually digging through 1,000 AI-generated, sponsored, and ad heavy results or just generating the exact answer I need.... there's really no competition.

 

[james9701]

What do they mean when they say water is used? Does that mean it runs through a heat exchanger and is dumped into a river? Evaporation pond? Onto the ground? What's the source of the water? How plentiful is water at that source? Evaporation means it precipitates as rain again so it's not really wasted. Deposited on the ground means it recharges an aquifer. Dumped in a river means it's either taken up again further downstream or deposited into a salt water body which can be beneficial or harmful environmentally. The best situation would probably be to use a closed loop system where the water recirculation constantly and the heat is dumped or used elsewhere. That would be more expensive though, probably.
Using water isn't inherently a bad thing, environmentally speaking. Things like how you source it, how you use/ dispose of it, and how much energy is used matter.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.

And there goes all credibility for the report right there.

 

[nitrium]

Servers often use evaporative cooling to keep the air cool.
And in order to make those swamp coolers more effective, they like to build giant server farms in the desert where the air is hotter and water is scarce.

^^^ This. Evaporative Cooling is far more cost effective than radiators and giant fans... if you have the water for it. Building these server farms along major rivers (just like nuclear power plants) reduces your cooling costs to near zero.

 

[Geef]

What a waste!

A well-made Fremen Stillsuit is so good at recycling its wearer's water, that the wearer would lose only a thimbleful of water a day on a desert world like Arrakis. 😷

 

[DSzymborski]

Data centers are causing environmental stress not just due to power demands, but water usage too, with AI services like ChatGPT ramping up consumption.

Just Five ChatGPT Queries Can Use 16oz of Water, Say Researchers : Read more

Because as well all know that, like smoke, evaporated water flies into the sky and becomes stars.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIMcStAwJ7Y

 

[Amdlova]

Swamp cooler works when the humidity is low as he'll. I have some fans with mist water, when have a dry day I use it with 30w of energy can low the temperature of the room in 3 our 4°c with air conditioner uses 300W for same effect only drawback it uses 1L water per hour.

 

[bit_user]

Water is neither created nor destroyed.

Being neither an element nor a noble gas, that's actually not true. In the context of the article, since they're talking neither about hydrolysis nor reacting anything with it, you're right that there's no actual destruction of water. That's obviously not the point, though.

What do they mean when they say water is used?

Evaporated (i.e. so it's no longer available for other uses).

Evaporation means it precipitates as rain again so it's not really wasted.

It's wasted if you evaporate it in a place where water is scarce and in high demand, but it rains down somewhere where it isn't. If the datacenter is somewhere arid, where water scarity tends to be a problem, then it's almost guaranteed that there won't be precipitation in the vicinity. Even if it does precipitate nearby, you can get a phenomenon called virga, where the rain evaporates before it even reaches the ground. While hiking in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, I've seen this with my own eyes.

Virga - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Whether the water usage quoted in the article is a problem depends entirely on where the datacenter is located. If we were talking about the Colorado River basin, then every drop of water to be found is already overcomitted.

 

[bit_user]

What a waste!

A well-made Fremen Stillsuit is so good at recycling its wearer's water, that the wearer would lose only a thimbleful of water a day on a desert world like Arrakis. 😷

It's been too long since I read Dune, but the stillsuits would need to have some kind of battery-powered airconditioner to keep their occupants from boiling. It's not like people sweat for no reason.

In fact, I've heard perspiration described as one of humans' superpowers (another being long-distance running). A lot of animals aren't nearly as good at getting rid of heat, and will suffer heat exhaustion long before we do (so long as we have enough water and the humidity isn't too high).

 

[Elusive Ruse]

It's been too long since I read Dune, but the stillsuits would need to have some kind of battery-powered airconditioner to keep their occupants from boiling. It's not like people sweat for no reason.

In fact, I've heard perspiration described as one of humans' superpowers (another being long-distance running). A lot of animals aren't nearly as good at getting rid of heat, and will suffer heat exhaustion long before we do (so long as we have enough water and the humidity isn't too high).

Dune has a few glaring issues like that but thankfully the story makes you forgive them.

 

[oofdragon]

I call it bs

 

[rluker5]

Depending on the questions, I might consume more than 16 oz/5 questions.

 

[edzieba]

And there goes all credibility for the report right there.

Ah yes, as long as we just ignore externalities and pretend they do not exist, we never need to deal with their effects and consequences. Just tow things outside the environment!

 

[rluker5]

I would use ChatGPT less if Google would fix their increasingly useless and apparently easily exploited search algorithms.
If it's a choice between manually digging through 1,000 AI-generated, sponsored, and ad heavy results or just generating the exact answer I need.... there's really no competition.

Google's business model is click based. You can get your answers but you have to pay in clicks.

 

[tennis2]

16oz eh? Is this the AI server's way of saying "hold my beer"?

 

[decembermouse]

Because as well all know that, like smoke, evaporated water flies into the sky and becomes stars.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIMcStAwJ7Y

I wish. Water vapor's role in driving climate change gives cause for concern in evaporative cooling of this scale. NASA did another study though that shows how thoughts and prayers expressed on Twitter definitely become stars, so at least there's that.

 

[parkerthon]

Sure this wasn’t a study by USA Today? Because that’s how terrible and oversimplifying the whole analysis is to arrive at 5 chatgpt queries use 16oz of water. There’s valid concerns with the environmental impact of high density computing but there’s zero useful about this except to serve as click bait in which it succeeded sadly. Was this a grad student project?

 

[russell_john]

Microsoft's biggest problem is Google's data center in Iowa pretty much gobbled up all the Wind Power contracts and locked them up for 25 years (20 or 21 years left). One wind farm that hadn't even started construction Google contracted to buy ALL their electricity for 25 years after the wind farm came online. The project had approval but stalled on funding and with that contract in hand they were easily able to get additional loans. Apple also has a data center here and they also bought up wind power contracts. One of the biggest problems in expanding wind power is the lack of high tension power lines to carry the electricity from where it's made to where it is used.

Unfortunately biofuels don't reduce CO2 emissions all that much when you figure based on Calories or BTUs .... A big part of the reason biofuels put out less CO2 per gallon is because it has less carbon and hence doesn't have as high of a Caloric or BTU output as oil or gasoline. Once you compensate for the BTU difference you find gasoline and biofuels put out pretty much the same amount of CO2 per BTU.

 

[russell_john]

Haven't Microsoft and Google every heard of recirculating water. You know, use water to cool the servers and then use a heat exchanger to cool the water, then send it back to cool the servers? This seems like a rather easy fix to the water consumption problem. Not only that, but you use the waste heat from the heat exchanger to power a turbine and produce electricity for the data center too.

Well consider the source, a state that's losing a lot of business to states that have a lot of water available and have sources of zero carbon electricity sources. California gets a lot of it's water AND electricity from the same source and that source is about tapped out because of a long term drought that doesn't look to be ending anytime soon.

 

[bit_user]

Haven't Microsoft and Google every heard of recirculating water. You know, use water to cool the servers and then use a heat exchanger to cool the water, then send it back to cool the servers? This seems like a rather easy fix to the water consumption problem. Not only that, but you use the waste heat from the heat exchanger to power a turbine and produce electricity for the data center too.

Did it ever occur to you that a closed-loop water cooling system requires additional energy to remove heat from the water (or re-condense it, if it's steam)? That involves additional energy (not to mention equipment costs). So, it's essentially a water vs. energy tradeoff. Take your pick.

And no, you can't get that energy from your turbine - the steam in your imaginary system would be far too low-pressure to convert to an appreciable amount of kinetic energy.