News Using GPT-4 to generate 100 words consumes up to 3 bottles of water — AI data centers also raise power and water bills for nearby residents

[Admin]

New research shows generative AI consumes a lot of water — up to 1,408ml to generate 100 words of text — in addition to electricity.

Using GPT-4 to generate 100 words consumes up to 3 bottles of water — AI data centers also raise power and water bills for nearby residents : Read more

 

[Findecanor]

Even data centres that use "renewable energy" use energy that could have been used for something actually useful.

 

[coolitic]

This sounds like a highly suspicious figure; it's not like the water you use for cooling is just "consumed", and even when it evaporates, it collects back into the system.

 

[Gururu]

The only solution is to make those companies pay higher water bills for city water or to generate their own clean water supply. Costs I am sure customers will love to endure. Unfortunately these companies likely getting huge subsidies to put their companies in certain locations, possibly including utility discounts. I wouldn’t be so sure all of this wouldn’t be considered and covered in negotiations, so in the end the water usage is paid for appropriately so that it can be replaced.

 

[AcostaJA]

I suscribe other' pior opinions, the study figures are opinionated at least, or madeup seeking an political headline, I'm familiar with GPU (ai) servers farms, some of them even dont use water but direct air or submerged hardware in cooling oil (the most modern), and those on liquid cooling use filtered water mixed with additives to avoid clogging intrisically being closed circuits, so if any water is spent is only when filling the circuits, nothing is wasted during its operation as the biased "study" poisonously suggest.

Datacenters expent tons of energy, but often they generate its own energy by solar panels, while this is something all we want to improve by a number of interest, the truth is often this power comes from renewable sources as solar, nuclear on wind or combination, much cleaner than a single rockstar concert tour.

I'm dissaponted to read how some Universities waste money on untrue narratives often hiding political pursuits, also dissapont when free media replicate this naratives, politicians calls on censorship (or 'missinfo-hate' speech correction), I want politicians calling on accouintability on faked or biased 'studies' presented as 'science' or backed by scientist wich is worst, they know are biased and cares nothing on truth but their political goals.

 

[Pierce2623]

This sounds like a highly suspicious figure; it's not like the water you use for cooling is just "consumed", and even when it evaporates, it collects back into the system.

If I go by the liters per hour rating on my pump, my AIO doesn’t even run three bottles of water through the radiator in the time it takes to generate 100 words in a LLM like LLama or Mistral , even if I use no GPU offloading.

 

[AcostaJA]

Even data centres that use "renewable energy" use energy that could have been used for something actually useful.

As powering a rockstar plane (in a year a single private Jet expend on Fuel more than Facebook on Training LLAMA3), or a politician rally? and that are not biased figures, nither comes from renewable (carbon neutral) sources LMFAO

 

[m3city]

Wait, no data given in football fields (more like hand-egg for me..) or swimming pools? How can I relate to this.

 

[anoldnewb]

If I go by the liters per hour rating on my pump, my AIO doesn’t even run three bottles of water through the radiator in the time it takes to generate 100 words in a LLM like LLama or Mistral , even if I use no GPU offloading.

Training the models is very energy intensive. Inferencing via a trained model consumes orders of magnitude less energy.

 

[anoldnewb]

I suscribe other' pior opinions, the study figures are opionated at least, or madeup seeking an political headline, I'm familiar with GPU (ai) servers farms, some of them even dont use water but direct air or submerged hardware in cooling oil (the most modern), and those on liquid cooling use filtered water mixed with additives to avoid clogging intrisically being closed circuits, so if any water is spent is only when filling the circuits, nothing is wasted during its operation as the biased "study" poisonously suggest.

Datacenters expent tons of energy, but often they generate its own energy by solar panels, while this is something all we want to improve by a number of interest, the truth is often this power comes from renewable sources as solar, nuclear on wind or combination, much cleaner than a single rockstar concert tour.

I'm dissaponted to read how some Universities waste money on untrue narratives often hiding political pursuits, also dissapont when free media replicate this naratives, politicians calls on censorship (or 'missinfo-hate' speech correction), I want politicians calling on accouintability on faked or biased 'studies' presented as 'science' or backed by scientist wich is worst, they know are biased and cares nothing on truth but their political goals.

1. How does the data center get the cold air or water to run through the loops? If they use a cooling tower then some of the water that i s sprayed down in the tower is lost to evaporation.

2. Do solar powered data centers run at night? Could the wind or nuclear power be used for something else besides a data center?

 

[AcostaJA]

1. How does the data center get the cold air or water to run through the loops? If they use a cooling tower then some of the water that i s sprayed down in the tower is lost to evaporation.

Cold air comes from the environment, the liquid running on the loops comes from factories where is processed (is very similar to car coolant but there is no concentrate to dilute, all the liquid is sourced from manufaturers to ensure purity), spraying down water on the cooling towers may actual evaporate some water, but im knowledge there are no data center using this cooling method, and often they sell the datacenter heath to reheat utility water so ti wont frozze on pipes on its way to serve commuinities (thats why most datacenter are located at cool places).

2. Do solar powered data centers run at night? Could the wind or nuclear power be used for something else besides a data center?

Datacenters solar powered run at night on Betteries like Tesla's super packs, yes nuclear power could be used on something different, whats on Politicians planes fuel or Some Signer , a single Executive Jet fliying 800h (typical per NBAA) a year burns more energy than a tipical datacenter training AI models, if we need to shutdown somthing, I'm at the progress side.
A Single Business Jet, America has hundred of them serving politicians, hollywood stars and rich people as Elon Musk or Bill Gates, a single Business Jet polute more than a typical datacenter, like Xai newest or openAI's, not to name Facebook (meta) which are the most modest and the few that shares AI models with the comunity.

And we have passenger Jets, why you dont travel by eletric train on your next vacation or sail on a boat?

 

[AcostaJA]

Training the models is very energy intensive. Inferencing via a trained model consumes orders of magnitude less energy.

Pierce figures are right and legit, while its true inference is much less energy intesive, it uses the same hardware as training, his point is that dont waste water, BTW the article focused on inferencing.

 

[AcostaJA]

The study is so picky that Blames Google on using Dalles' 6% water ... (Dalles is an small town, at about 16000 ppl) so google is spending water equivalent to 1000 habitants, that preocupant ginven the size of this datacenter and how many people works there I assume employes barely use the WC and unoften take a shower at the facility, maybe making coffe is allowed to not exceed that water usage figures.

BS, bad "science"

 

[JRStern]

So soon the oceans will start receding.
Good news, right?
Until the whole Earth is as dry as Mars.
Don't worry, Jensen Huang will pay Elon Musk to fetch a few giant ice asteroids and crash them into the dry ocean beds.
EGBOK

 

[tennis2]

This sounds like a highly suspicious figure; it's not like the water you use for cooling is just "consumed", and even when it evaporates, it collects back into the system.

Just fear-mongering.
AI IS USING ALL OUR DRINKING WATER!!!!

 

[newtechldtech]

ummm .. place the servers in ALASKA ?

 

[Cylens]

How much do the deluge of ads you place on your site cost in terms of water bottles? Have you done any research into what resources that requires in terms of energy consumption? Are you being environmentally conscious of the ads you put up?

 

[Notton]

This sounds like a highly suspicious figure; it's not like the water you use for cooling is just "consumed", and even when it evaporates, it collects back into the system.

They collect the water now? Last I heard the data centers dump the hot and humid air into the atmosphere, rather than having a closed loop system.

The whole point of evaporative cooling is to reduce electricity bills, and you'd need a dehumidifier running to turn humid air into water. Dehumidifiers need electricity to run.

If by system, you mean the surrounding environment, the wind would blow all that extra humidity away and it won't go directly back into the water source that was used.

 

[thestryker]

Seems like a lot of folks in this thread are rolling with their own agenda which is ironic given the claims being put forth. There should be no question as to the energy intensity of adding AI into the standard data center environment. The overall problem is hardly unique or new however and it's a great example of how government inaction and the sensationalism of politics hurts everyone. Requiring companies to minimize their surrounding impact should be part of the agreements that allows them to build in the first place.

Waiting for business to fix it for you is never a good solution. Look at all the semiconductor manufacturing that goes on in Arizona as a great example. They didn't really start worrying about the water consumption until more recently when shortages have become real so they're all building systems that are as closed as they can be. This is something that should be obvious to anyone who signed off on these facilities had they bothered to take it into account.

 

[thestryker]

The study is so picky that Blames Google on using Dalles' 6% water ... (Dalles is an small town, at about 16000 ppl) so google is spending water equivalent to 1000 habitants, that preocupant ginven the size of this datacenter and how many people works there I assume employes barely use the WC and unoften take a shower at the facility, maybe making coffe is allowed to not exceed that water usage figures.

BS, bad "science"

I'm curious where you came up with this seeing as it wasn't actually in the article. You're also conflating population with water allocation which... yeah...

Here's the actual quote regarding The Dalles:

After a lengthy court battle, the Oregonian newspaper forced Google to disclose how much its data centers were using in The Dalles, about 80 miles east of Portland; it turned out to be nearly a quarter of all the water available in the town, the documents revealed.

 

[DougMcC]

Training the models is very energy intensive. Inferencing via a trained model consumes orders of magnitude less energy.

If they're including training water costs in the ridiculously large figure they got, then they are obviously not amortizing that cost correctly. They have probably misguessed by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude how many 100 word inferences are helping to cover that cost.

 

[pixelpusher220]

Cold air comes from the environment, the liquid running on the loops comes from factories where is processed (is very similar to car coolant but there is no concentrate to dilute, all the liquid is sourced from manufaturers to ensure purity), spraying down water on the cooling towers may actual evaporate some water, but im knowledge there are no data center using this cooling method, and often they sell the datacenter heath to reheat utility water so ti wont frozze on pipes on its way to serve commuinities (thats why most datacenter are located at cool places).


Datacenters solar powered run at night on Betteries like Tesla's super packs, yes nuclear power could be used on something different, whats on Politicians planes fuel or Some Signer , a single Executive Jet fliying 800h (typical per NBAA) a year burns more energy than a tipical datacenter training AI models, if we need to shutdown somthing, I'm at the progress side.
A Single Business Jet, America has hundred of them serving politicians, hollywood stars and rich people as Elon Musk or Bill Gates, a single Business Jet polute more than a typical datacenter, like Xai newest or openAI's, not to name Facebook (meta) which are the most modest and the few that shares AI models with the comunity.

And we have passenger Jets, why you dont travel by eletric train on your next vacation or sail on a boat?

Literal BS you're pushing. Plz stop.

Data Centers are not covered in solar panels, and if they did it wouldn't provide even a small fraction of the power they need - which is why they don't.

The other big issue is the cooling towers are on the roof so solar isn't nearly as viable since you've now .

I live in Northern VA, capital of data centers so I see plenty every day driving around. NOVA is not a 'cool' place most of the year.

 

[pixelpusher220]

I'm curious where you came up with this seeing as it wasn't actually in the article. You're also conflating population with water allocation which... yeah...

Here's the actual quote regarding The Dalles:

Yeah, poster seems to be trolling for whatever reason.

I'm still confused about the water use. Why are they so water intensive? Unless you live in the desert and have a swamp cooler AC, most modern AC systems don't use water at all?

 

[Pierce2623]

Training the models is very energy intensive. Inferencing via a trained model consumes orders of magnitude less energy.

You’re 100% correct but “generating 100 words” OBVIOUSLY refers to inference rather than training, unless they’re baking the training costs in as part of it which then becomes very iffy logic.

 

[thestryker]

I'm still confused about the water use. Why are they so water intensive? Unless you live in the desert and have a swamp cooler AC, most modern AC systems don't use water at all?

The only place they tend to use big AC systems is in areas where water isn't plentiful. The Dalles is located right off the Columbia River hence the water usage.

Here's what I think is the pertinent Oregonian article on it if you're interested they elaborate a lot on the local deals, water usage and climate: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-...-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html