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

[Dntknwitall]

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.

I'm on your side. Just look at the University it comes from and you can generate what narrative they are going for. It's sad our world has come to misleading and mind altering lies from accredited scholars/Universities. The thing is 50% or more that read this will actually believe this because they do not know how these servers work. My thoughts are this article is in fact trying to dismantle Chat GPT so they can get users to feel guilty and use an AI system built by one of this Universities choice.

 

[computerguy72]

Water is not "consumed" when using it for cooling. At most it evaporates then condensed again when the concentrations are high enough. The sun shining on our oceans is the king of this natural process with a few billion times more evaporation than all networks cause on the entire planet.

Clearly false premise. Many things require exchange between best and cold. Good news is they both can be used in ancillary processes. I.e. hot water can heat homes, food, produce energy etc.. excess cold has many uses too.

 

[j_123]

According to the title, the water is "consumed". So it's taken, processed, and made into a different form, huh?

Or is it simply used, not consumed?

 

[j_123]

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.

Exactly, this is BS.

 

[j_123]

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

That is an absurd thing to say, as you used a data center to read and reply to this article.

 

[n810]

As a tech person who's worked in data centers, I would like to know just exactly how they're using all that water... it seems suspicious. Perhaps these are small invisible non-bottles for PR uses?
Liquid coolers use solutions that aren't water for safety reasons - and I've yet to see any rack mounted hardware that is liquid cooled.
Water is famous for breaking electronics and does not cool them. The closest I've seen are servers bathed in an oil that's non-conductive.
Then there is the term 'bottles' that is being used, and they clearly don't use all those bottles, they don't use any bottles, that I've ever seen. I note that bottles are the worst polluting part of bottled water.
I've heard of water in turbine generators, or for heat exchange... those seem more likely applications for water if they're using it.
I still have questions about the conservation of energy here - as simple physics lets us know that the matter can not be destroyed - it must go somewhere, thus if it's used for cooling, it is still water, and could be captured, and then easy to reuse, as it is water. If it were dirty, it wouldn't work for machines, so it's likely clean - and if it is clean, it's not getting dirtier at data centers.
So I'm skeptical about all these usage claims as they're rather odd.
Also the issues that there are with water use if there are any could likely resolve with tech we already have but they're not using.