archive.is link to article from allabout.ai at www.allaboutai.com/resources/…/ai-environment/
From this page it turns out that every prompt is one glass of water. Is there any chance we run out of water at this point ?
Whether you use AI, think it's a "fun stupid thing for memes", or even ignore it, you should know it's already polluting worse than global air travel.
Submitted 6 months ago by Reygle@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
vane@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Kissaki@feddit.org 6 months ago
There have been reports of AI data centers further draining water reserves in areas of non abundant nor sufficiently recovering water. Which has not only environment but social and human consequences in the area.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
But remember, one almond uses at least as much water as two requests to ChatGPT (sources: almonds, queries, data centers), so if you’re eating almonds at all then you’re being inconsistent.
boaratio@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I appreciate you sharing sources for that. I know almond use a lot of water. But one of the things you mentioned is food, and the other is a liar.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 months ago
almonds have value, while data centers dont generate profit.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
that’s very pragmatic, but you can also flip this around – almonds are a luxury compared to other more practical foods, whereas LLMs can help a coder net an income if used properly.
davidagain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, AI is shit and a massive waste of energy, but it’s NOTHING compared to the energy usage of the airline industry.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Auth@lemmy.world 6 months ago
both those numbers are insignificant.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That says national not global
davidagain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I checked. The IEA says airlines generate about a gigaton of CO2, and it’s still growing since the dip of covid, which is perhaps where your infographic authors got their screwy figures, which are, like I suggested, the wrong order of magnitude.
davidagain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Picked at random, It also claims this:
Why does nighttime AI use burn dirtier energy? Fossil fuel dominance: Coal and gas supply up to 90% of overnight electricity. Solar drop-off: Solar disappears after sunset, while wind delivers only ~30% capacity at night. Peak carbon hours: Between 2–4 AM, grid intensity rises to 450–650 gCO₂/kWh, compared to 200–300 gCO₂/kWh in the afternoon.
This is complete bullshit in the UK, where energy is greenest in the small hours of the night when demand is low and the wind turbines are still turning. Least green and most expensive is late afternoon and evening, when energy usage spikes.
Let me reiterate. AI is crap. AI is a massive waste of energy, but your website has its calculations off in terms of order of magnitude when it comes to comparing the airline industry pushing tons of metal fast and hard into and through the sky with AI pushing a bunch of electrons through a bunch of transistors. Seriously, way off.
davidagain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Just because something has a pretty infographic doesn’t make it true.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Well what you said is not true, but since you are so interested in this, why limit it to AI? Just quit using computers all together.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What is not true?
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
They said that AI is polluting worse than global air travel. They are mixing up pollution vs energy used. If it was pollution global air travel creates 80 Million Tons of CO a month. All AI in use is 15 million tons a month. Global air travel is far more polluting.
As an aside, and this is crazy: there is a mention, in the article OP posted, that suggests that humans, are far worse than AI for CO creation depending on the task. Which I found surprising.
The data comes a paper in the journal Nature:
Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writer, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts. Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.
Ok I honestly did not see that coming.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Very well thought out response. Will respond in kind.
HurrDeeeDurrr K
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Thanks for clarifying. You made up statistics, your post is nonsense.
And you responded without any consideration that the consistent reliance on computers, in general, is using a HUGE amount of energy, AI or not, indicate that you simply want to chase windmills and not have a conversation. Well played.
HurrDeeeDurrrr indeed. Next time let the grown ups talk.
boovard@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Barely ever used it just for that reason and the fact that the algorithms are getting worse by the day. But now my work is forcing us to use it. To increase productivity you see…
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I wonder how one gets banned from using these tools without just spraying non stop paste’s of expletives in to the chat box
Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I stopped l, not that I used it that much, about 5 months ago.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A lot of these studies they list are already years outdated and irrelevant. The models are much more efficient now, and it’s mainly the Musk owned AI that’s high pollution. Most of the pollution from data centers is not from AI, but other tech.
The old room-sized ENIAC computers used 150-200 kW of power, and couldn’t do even a fraction of what your smart phone can do. The anti-AI people are taking advantage of most people’s ignorance, intentionally using outdated studies, and implying that the power usage will continue to grow- when in fact it has already shrunk dramatically.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A Phone can’t do anything. It can send/receive and the datacenter does the work. Surely everyone understands this.
A modern AI data center have already shot right past 200 Terrawatt hours and are on track to double again in the next two years.
People can’t be this blind.
ImageAeonFelis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A phone can do a lot. Much much more than ENIAC era supercomputer (I think you’ll have to get pretty close to the end of the previous century to find a _super_computer
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 6 months ago
LoL. Guess I can just get rid of phone’s processor then, huh?
And again, you link to an outdated study. Because the new data shows the use declining, so it wouldn’t help your fear mongering.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I did some research and according to some AI’s this is true. According to some other AI’s this is false.
MangoCats@feddit.it 6 months ago
The statement strikes me as overblown extreme position staking.
I use AI in my work, not every day, not even every week, but once in a while I’ll run 20-30 queries in a multi-hour session. At the estimated 2Wh per query, that puts my long day of AI code work at 60Wh.
By comparison, driving an electric car consumes approximately 250Wh per mile. So… my evil day spent coding with AI has burned as much energy as a 1/4 mile of driving a relatively efficient car, something that happens every 15 seconds while cruising down the highway…
In other words, my conscience is clear about my personal AI energy usage, and my $20/month subscription fee would seem to amply pay for all the power consumed and then some.
Now, if you want to talk about the massive data mining operations taking place at global-multinational corporations, especially those trolling the internet to build population profiles for their own advantages and profit… that’s a very different scale than one person tapping away at a keyboard. Do they scale up to the same energy usage as the 12 million gallons of jet fuel burned hourly by the air travel (and cargo) industries? Probably not yet.
9.6kWh of energy in a gallon of jet fuel, so just jet fuel consumption is burning over 115 Gigawatts on average, 24-7-365.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“Dear expensive thing: Are you wasteful?”
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
“Uh…yes? Wait! No…”
melfie@lemy.lol 6 months ago
I have started using Copilot more lately, but I’ve also switched from plastic straws to paper, so I’m good, right?
frostysauce@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I just fashion a straw from the microplastics already in my brain when I need one!
MangoCats@feddit.it 6 months ago
I’ve also switched from plastic straws to paper,
The baby turtles thank you.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Why did you start using straws at all?
jokersteve@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You can drink one less coffee per week and so save more carbon emission and water usage than not using LLMs.
moonburster@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sauce?
Would love to have a read on that :)
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 6 months ago
OP, this statement is bullshit. you can do about 5 million requests for ONE flight.
i'm gonna quote my old post:
I had the discussion regarding generated CO2 a while ago here, and with the numbers my discussion partner gave me, the calculation said that the yearly usage of ChatGPT is appr. 0.0017% of our CO2 reduction during the covid lockdowns - chatbots are not what is kiling the climate. What IS killing the climate has not changed since the green movement started: cars, planes, construction (mainly concrete production) and meat.
The exact energy costs are not published, but 3Wh / request for ChatGPT-4 is the upper limit from what we know (and thats in line with the appr. power consumption on my graphics card when running an LLM). Since Google uses it for every search, they will probably have optimized for their use case, and some sources cite 0.3Wh/request for chatbots - it depends on what model you use. The training is a one-time cost, and for ChatGPT-4 it raises the maximum cost/request to 4Wh. That's nothing. The combined worldwide energy usage of ChatGPT is equivalent to about 20k American households. This is for one of the most downloaded apps on iPhone and Android - setting this in comparison with the massive usage makes clear that saving here is not effective for anyone interested in reducing climate impact, or you have to start scolding everyone who runs their microwave 10 seconds too long.
Even compared to other online activities that use data centers ChatGPT's power usage is small change. If you use ChatGPT instead of watching Netflix you actually safe energy!
Water is about the same, although the positioning of data centers in the US sucks. The used water doesn't disappear tho - it's mostly returned to the rivers or is evaporated. The water usage in the US is 58,000,000,000,000 gallons (220 Trillion Liters) of water per year. A ChatGPT request uses between 10-25ml of water for cooling. A Hamburger uses about 600 galleons of water. 2 Trillion Liters are lost due to aging infrastructure . If you want to reduce water usage, go vegan or fix water pipes.
Read up here !
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you want to look at it another way, if you assume every single square inch of silicon from TSMC is Nvidia server accelerators/AMD EPYCs, every single one running AI 24/7/365…
It’s not that much power, or water.
That’s unrealistic, of course, but its literally the max physical cap humanity can produce.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If you only include chat bots, your numbers look good. Sadly reality isn’t in “chat bots”.
lets_get_off_lemmy@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Could you explain further?
jokersteve@lemmy.world 6 months ago
please elaborate?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m not sure what you’re reference. Imagegen models are not much different, especially now that they’re going transformers/MoE. Video gen models are chunky, but more rarely used, and they’re usually much smaller parameter counts.
Basically anything else machine learning is an order of magnitude less energy, at least
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Your article doesn’t even claim that. Do you have any idea just how carbon intensive a flight is?
MangoCats@feddit.it 6 months ago
300,000 liters of jet fuel to send one 747 across the Atlantic Ocean - one time.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 6 months ago
For modern planes 70 - 90k liter… it’s bad enough, no need to exaggerate
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Or a LLM query?
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I imagine people making that claim accept air travel as useful and “AI”, really, all datacenters as not useful. I’ve had people tell me oh, air travel is more efficient per mile that road travel. But this ignores that people wouldn’t drive thousands of miles if it was not as easy as booking a flight.
fittedsyllabi@lemmy.world 6 months ago
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
What is this masterpiece ? Pro-pornography subliminal propaganda ?
REDACTED@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Bitcoin or crypto?
AndiHutch@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
It also pollutes the mind of ignorant people with misinformation. Not that that is anything new. But I do think objective truth is very important in a democratic society. It reminds me of that video that used to go around that showed Sinclair Broadcasting in like 20 some different ‘local’ broadcast news all repeating the same words verbatim. It ended with ‘This is extremely dangerous to our democracy’. With AI being added to all the search engines, it is really easy to look something and unknowingly get bombarded with false info pulled out of the dregs of internet. 90% of people don’t verify the answer to see if it is based in reality.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 6 months ago
Shame to see this clickbait blog misinfo here, but the anti-ai sloppers wont let that stop them.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wth?
Deceptichum@quokk.au 6 months ago
It’s a shitty biased site with incorrect data, ironically what looks to have been written by an AI.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 6 months ago
As soon as you see water consumption being called an issue you know it’s not to be taken seriously. Water doesn’t just disappear.
Reygle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Surely you understand clean FRESH water is a limited resource. Renewable sure, but LIMITED.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 6 months ago
They don’t need fresh water, nor do they dirty it.
gens@programming.dev 6 months ago
Water has to be cleaned. It is renewable, not free. My city has many sources, but most places where they build datacenters do not. It is a real problem
Either way the biggest proble, IMO, is the pressure on the electric grid. If the asshats building the centers would cooperate with others, there would be much less problems.
As for power usage, yea its a lot but still not an insane amount. The image and video generation uses a LOT more then text.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 6 months ago
image gen isn't so heavy either, but even i who arguments against this "AI is killing the environment"-bullshit agree on the video gen - there is a lot of power usage behind that one. might still not be an issue if using renewables, but if you use elon's illegally gas turbine powered AI, then it's fucking bad.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 6 months ago
HubertManne@piefed.social 6 months ago
This is my main issue with it. I think its useful enough but only if it uses about the same energy as you would use doing whatever without it. Most conversations I had with someone trying to convince me it does not use to much power end up being very much like crypto ones were it keeps on being apples to oranges and the energy consumption seems to much. Im hoping hardware can be made to get the power use lower the way graphics cards did. I want to see querying an llm using about the same as searching for the answer or lower.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Generating bullshit that isn’t really that useful.
Remember when the Apple Newton “revolutionized” computing with handwriting recognition?
No, of course not, because the whole thing sucked and vanished outside of old Doonesbury cartoons. LOL
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
My peer used the newton for comp aci class notes.
Then she went on to mastermind the behaviour and tactics of Myth: The Fallen Lords.
It’s tenuous, but I say that’s causal.
rimu@piefed.social 6 months ago
The emoji usage, heading & bold text pattern makes me certain the article was written using AI.
ReCursing@feddit.uk 6 months ago
It’s using energy, we need more renewables. That’s not a problem with AI. Direct your opprobrium where it belongs
lime@feddit.nu 6 months ago
idk if that’s the intended takeaway from those numbers.
According to AllAboutAI analysis, global AI processing generates over 260,930 kilograms of CO₂ monthly from ChatGPT alone, equivalent to 260 transatlantic flights, with 1 billion daily queries consuming 300 MWh of electricity.
according to the faa there are on average 5500 planes in the air every day, and while i couldn’t find an exact number there seem to be between 350 and 1 200 transatlantic flights every day, depending on season.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 6 months ago
260,930 kilograms of CO₂ monthly from ChatGPT alone
ChatGPT has the most marketing, but it’s only part of the AI ecosystem… and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if other AI products are bigger now. Practically every time someone does a Google search, Gemini AI spits out a summary whether you wanted it or not — and Google processes more than 8 billion search queries per day. That’s a lot of slop.
There are also more bespoke tools that are being pushed aggressively in enterprise. Microsoft’s Copilot is used extensively in tech for code generation and code reviews. Ditto for Claude Code. And believe me, tech companies are pushing this shit hard. I write code for a living, and the company I work for is so bullish on AI that they’ve mandated that us devs have to use it every day if we want to stay employed. They’re even tracking our usage to make sure we comply… and I know I’m not alone in my experience.
All of that combined probably still doesn’t reach the same level of CO² emissions as global air travel, but there are a lot more fish in this proverbial pond than just OpenAI, and when you add them all up, the numbers get big. AI usage is also rising much, much faster than air travel, so it’s really only a matter of time before it does cross that threshold.
lime@feddit.nu 6 months ago
they list the others in the article.
otp@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Just goes to show that you don’t even need AI to spread misinformation! Haha
Artisian@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Thank you.
Idk if LLMs can tell which number is bigger. But we already knew humans can’t.
leftthegroup@lemmings.world 6 months ago
Yes, but there’s zero fucking actual benefit.
Seeing memes posted here that use AI while sitting on it is the most confusing thing to me.
Just… don’t use it, people. The hole burning in AI bros’ pockets will close up if you just stop making it profitable. Even the free ones are making money with ads. Don’t use it, even for a joke.
MangoCats@feddit.it 6 months ago
“AI” and related tech does a lot of useful translation work. It translates speech to text, one language to another, maybe skilled people can do these jobs more elegantly and correctly, but certainly not more cheaply.
lime@feddit.nu 6 months ago
we do a lot of things for no benefit. video games, golf, horse racing, grilling… all those have far larger carbon footprints. as someone else said, focus on the actual negatives of generative ai, like the proven cognitive decline and loneliness.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Frankly focusing on the carbon output of AI models is a red herring. It’s not a significant part of the problem and just makes people complacent in the form of feeling like we’ve achieved something if it succeeds. It’s not worse than stuff like video games
Focus on the actual negative effects of AI, but carbon intensity isn’t a major one
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 6 months ago
People like you wouldn’t have seen the benefit in cars vs horse and carriages, computers vs typewriters and books, or watches vs sundials.
I bet you think that the only thing AI is used for is ChatGPT style conversations too.
Grimy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 6 months ago
Makes me wonder what they are doing to reach these figures.
Because I can run many models at home and it wouldn't require me to be pouring bottles of water on my PC, nor it would show on my electricity bill.FatCrab@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Most of these figures are guesses along a spectrum of “educated” since many models, like ChatGPT, are effectively opaque to everyone and we have no idea what the current iteration architecture actually looks like. But MIT did do a very solid study not too long ago that looked at the energy cost for various queries for various architectures. Text queries for very large GPT models actually had a higher energy cost than image gen using a normal number of iterations for Stable Diffusion models actually, which is pretty crazy. Anyhow, you’re looking at per-query energy usage of like 15 seconds microwaving at full power to riding a bike a few blocks. When tallied over the immense number of queries being serviced, it does add up.
That all said, I think energy consumption is a silly thing to attack AI over. Modernize, modularize, and decentralize the grids and convert to non-GHG sources and it doesn’t matter–there are other concerns with AI that are far more pressing (like deskilling effects and inability to control mis- and disinformation).
Artisian@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well, most of the carbon footprint for models is in training, which you probably don’t need to do at home.
That said, even with training they are not nearly our leading cause of pollution.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Article says that training o4 required equalivent amount of energy compared to powering san francisco for 3 days
Flagstaff@programming.dev 6 months ago
Basically every tech company is using it… It’s millions of people, not just us…
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Billions. Practically every Google search runs through Gemini now, and Google handles more search queries per day than there are humans on Earth.
maccam912@programming.dev 6 months ago
What does it mean to consume water? Like it’s used to cool something and then put back in a river? Or it evaporates? It’s not like it can be used in some irrecoverable way right?
Cricket@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I kind of wondered the same thing in the past, but the other day I read an LA Times article that illustrated the extent of the problem of water loss (not particularly related to data centers although we know they contribute to it). The main problem with evaporating water seems to be that it was water that we could have used which ended up in the ocean instead.
latimes.com/…/global-drying-groundwater-depletion
I infer that evaporation is worse than flushing it down the drain, so to speak, because if it were flushed you would at least be able to treat and recover much of it using much less energy than recovering it from the ocean. So it sounds like evaporation is largely (but obviously not completely) a one-way street, especially in arid regions, since only a tiny portion of the evaporated water would come back there as rain.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Which is why I threw up in my mouth a little when my boss said we all need to be more bullish on AI this morning.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
It’s so important to differentiate between commercial LLMs and AI as a general concept.