Clive ThompsonJul 30, 2023

Every time someone talks to ChatGPT for 20 exchanges or so ...

... Microsoft's servers use a half-liter of freshwater to cool down

AI is *thirsty*

My essay on some implications of this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e

A "friend" link, in case you don't subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e?sk=f5b2ea10c649a34236577139fecfd86a

Show threadNicholas WeaverJul 31, 2023

@clive That estimate says your queries are using .3 kWh of electricity or so, so it is about 2 cents of power and the water that gets boiled by that (since effectively all energy consumed by computers ends up as heat).

But I don't believe it, assuming 10s of runtime, that means your query used 180 servers for that 10 seconds. LLMs are hungry but not THAT hungry.

Show threadjwattJul 31, 2023
@ncweaver @clive @clive This is good work. Another issue, besides power usage, is water usage, and I'm not sure if it's with the article or the underlying research: seems a little overly simplistic to assume all water is fresh water, doesn't it? There's a lot of room for optimization there, and it seems like they'd have incentives to optimize.
Show threadNicholas Weaver

@jwatt @clive
It depends. Data centers on a river or ocean will direct heat-exchange. Other than that you use evaporation to dump heat, all AC type systems on any scale do ("cooling towers").

However, the water use is in the noise compared to say agricultural use for alfalfa. A single acre of alfalfa will use 4 acre-feet/year, so 5 MILLION liters of water to grow cattle feed (that is commonly shipped to Saudi Arabia where growing it is banned).

Jul 31, 2023 at 3:49pmWeb
Show threadNicholas WeaverJul 31, 2023
@jwatt @clive
To get a sense of scale, the Imperial Valley in CA (which is absolute desert) has 130,000 acres of alfalfa planted! If you care about water use, care about agriculture, and if you care about agricultural use, alfalfa is a god-damned ecological crime.
Show threadClive ThompsonJul 31, 2023

@ncweaver @jwatt

Yep — and almonds are right up there too

Show threadjwattJul 31, 2023
@ncweaver @clive guessing alfalfa is a lot denser or cheaper than grass? I know I have to pay a lot more for grass-fed beef and milk. Do those have better water footprints, too?
Show threadNicholas WeaverJul 31, 2023
@jwatt
Grass fed beef means you just let the cows lose on open land. Alfalfa is a hay/forrage crop, so used to feed cattle when you have too many/too dense. Mostly dairy cattle, rather than beef cattle.
Show threadjwattJul 31, 2023
@ncweaver you seem knowledgeable about this stuff: If we cut out alfalfa or did something else, how much would it effect the beef availability? I’d say maybe we’d just lose fast food and lower quality meat, but a lot of people depend on those as inexpensive and healthy sources of fats and proteins. In the rural US, buying a cow from a farmer and getting it processed can feed a family for a long long time—beef seems like it could be a really efficient source from that perspective.
Show threadNicholas WeaverJul 31, 2023

@jwatt Beef is absolutely a nightmare from a food conversion standpoint. You use beef where you have rangeland, grass that you aren't growing organized crops, as it can convert cellulose to protein.

Vegetable proteins (beans etc) are an order of magnitude cheaper & more efficient. For animal protein, fish. Lots and lots and lots of farmed salmon is incredibly efficient food conversion and really high quality protein.