alt Hacker NewsYou can go millions of prompts before you use up as much water as it took to make a single beef burger.
You can go tens of thousands of prompts to match the C02 emissions.
There are many legitimate concerns around AI. Water use/CO2 emissions isn’t currently one of them. Going vegan will make up your AI water consumption/CO2 Emissions many thousands of times over.
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How many gallons of water are you assuming are in that burger patty? Because, while cows do drink water that falls from the sky and lands on fields where it was going to land anyway, they also urinate most of it back out.
Very little water that would have been used for any other purpose, or isn’t naturally returned to the water cycle, ends up being consumed in the production of the burger patty.
To be clear I think your point about AI not consuming all that much water relative to other things is valid, but comparing it to the water consumed by eating meat weakens your point for anyone that hasn’t bought into the bunk “cows are driving climate change” narrative.
Water I agree. C02 (which is really a tangential metric if energy consumption which will vary by energy mix) I'd want some citations.
Also agree there are other ways we should pursue in parallel regarding emissions.
Ok great let's get rid of non-renewable powered AI _and_ stop eating animals.
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Source? Meat can be "produced" in a location where water is not as scarce. Rural areas. Datacenters "like" to grow in urban areas.
This source says that a 100 prompt spends half a liter of water https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co...
I remember this year google reported one google search spend a drop of water (or 5 drops, around that)
I have a few cows and rarely ever give them water. In the winter they get enough from snow and when it’s rainy we have a small pond that forms with a stream. They also prefer either of those to drinking well water from a cattle waterer. They are grass fed and rarely get fed stuff like corn.
For for thousands of pounds of beef, I’ve barely used any water at all. Don’t notice the extra consumption on my well at all, and I have a very low producing spring fed well (1 gallon per minute).
“Vegan” crops on the other hand line corn which are irrigated in many parts of the country use a great deal of water and often very inefficiently so.
Depends on the prompt. Do a video prompt and one 30 second video will use as much electricity as running your microwave on high for 15 minutes.