AI (specifically chatbots) is crap, has stolen and monetized work people shared for free, violates copyrights (including the GPL), has already caused job loss, is biased and bigoted, I’d even say somewhat unethical to use due to the aforementioned things. People are better off not using it (although it’s basically forced on you now when you go to certain websites). But I’ll just mention a couple things:
It takes around 200 ChatGPT queries to use 2 gallons of water for cooling (EDIT: seeing a lot of different answers on this, some as high as 2 gallons for only 15 queries. Lets go with that instead. It still means that taking a shower for only 4 seconds uses more water than a single ChatGPT query.)
A standard shower head uses 2½ gallons of water per minute
So to save water, taking a shorter shower, not having a swimming pool, not watering a lawn, not washing your car, not spraying driveways, flushing the toilet less often, washing a full load of laundry and running a full dishwasher instead of hand washing are all much more impactful than cutting out the occasional AI query.
I do hope that awareness of AI water waste will also motivate people to cut water use in other ways too, so it’s good that the issue keeps coming up.
AI (specifically chatbots) is crap, has stolen and monetized work people shared for free, violates copyrights (including the GPL), has already caused job loss, is biased and bigoted, I’d even say somewhat unethical to use due to the aforementioned things. People are better off not using it (although it’s basically forced on you now when you go to certain websites). But I’ll just mention a couple things:
It takes around 200 ChatGPT queries to use 2 gallons of water for cooling(EDIT: seeing a lot of different answers on this, some as high as 2 gallons for only 15 queries. Lets go with that instead. It still means that taking a shower for only 4 seconds uses more water than a single ChatGPT query.)So to save water, taking a shorter shower, not having a swimming pool, not watering a lawn, not washing your car, not spraying driveways, flushing the toilet less often, washing a full load of laundry and running a full dishwasher instead of hand washing are all much more impactful than cutting out the occasional AI query.
I do hope that awareness of AI water waste will also motivate people to cut water use in other ways too, so it’s good that the issue keeps coming up.