Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
nature.com
one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.
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And nobody seems to give a shit. Even people who would normally give a shit about this sort of thing. Even people who do things like denounce Bitcoin mining's waste of energy (and I agree) are not talking about the energy- and water- waste from AI systems.
That article says that OpenAI uses 6% of Des Moines' water.
Meanwhile-
https://abcnews.go.com/US/parts-america-water-crisis/story?id=98484121
And nobody seems to give a shit.
I guess it depends on how you use chatbots. If you’re just too lazy to click on the first google result you get, it’s wasteful to bother ChatGPT with your question. On the other hand, for complex topics, a single answer may save you quite a lot of googling and following links.
Oh, well as long as it save you from Googling it's okay that it's a massive ecological disaster. My mistake.
That's the opposite of what he said. That sort of usage isn't what ChatGPT is good for, it's best to use it for other kinds of things.
It's best to not use it. At all.
Feel free not to, I guess. But again, that wasn't the point of my comment. You mistook bleistift2's statement in the opposite way it was intended. ChatGPT's not intended as a replacement for a search engine so evaluating it on that basis is misleading.
That's just like... your opinion, man.
AI is going to be an important tool in the future. Decrying it as bad is similar to folks saying investing in green energy was stupid because without economies of scale they were expensive and inefficient.
Computers are using more energy. Instead of turning them off, let's find ways to produce energy less destructively, such as nuclear which would benefit EVs and all energy usage.
The future for the people who aren't dying of thirst due to the lack of water?
Did you even read the rest of my post?
The part where you suggested using nuclear energy? Which also uses a huge amount of fresh water?
Yes, I read it. I chose not to mention it since I didn't want to show that you were making my point stronger for me, but you forced my hand.
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/08/ew3-freshwater-use-by-us-power-plants-exec-sum.pdf
Then solar. Wind. Geothermal. Whatever. Energy usage is never, ever going down unless population does and probably not even then. If that silicon isn't used for AI it'll be something else. Then what?
Ah, you're one of the 'we shouldn't do anything about ecological disasters because something else will come along and make things just as bad anyway' crowd. I hear that's the latest right-wing school of thought now that it's almost impossible to deny climate change is happening.
What's your plan, everyone just turn back the wheel of time and homestead and grow potatoes and leave technology behind? Because regressiveness is a lynchpin of right-wing thought, too.
I don't think either of us are served by attacking each other, but we can dance if you want to, we can leave your friends behind, 'cause your friends can't... Oh sorry I got distracted.
Yes. The only two options are let companies like OpenAI use ridiculous amounts of energy and fresh water or we all live like it's the 19th century.
There are no other options. Certainly not something like, say, stop these AI companies from doing that and if they can't find a better solution, too bad.
I mean an argument could be made here, right? Just thinking theoretically.
Maxim: we want to be as eco-friendly as possible.
Per a given task, understand the least environmentally-taxing way to accomplish the goal.
Task requires one, two, or three/four DuckDuckGo searches? DDG away.
Task requires five DDG searches, OR one LLM query? Language model it is.
(LLM may well rarely be the answer there, of course, just laying out the theory!)
Bitcoin was wasteful with little benefit, but AI has the potential to benefit humanity at large. Maybe ChatGPT itself isn't a great example of that, but their research has gone on to spur lots of advancements in AI, advancement that have allowed AI to make all sorts of breakthroughs in areas like medicine
Yeah, but LLMs like ChatGPT and the like aren't where that advancement is being made. LLMs are driving investment in the technology, but it's just a mostly useless investor target that just happens to run on the same hardware that can be used for useful AI-powered research. Sure, it's pushing the hardware advancement forward maybe 10-15 years faster than it might have otherwise happened, but it's coming with a lot of wasteful baggage as well because LLMs are the golden boy investors want to to throw money at.
True the benefit actually exists here (how much is open for debate)
On the other hand, we should be doing full alarm bells and running around in a panic ramping down every use of energy possible before we leave our 100 surviving progeny a lifeless rock to live on. But humans don't work that way. By the time we are all on board it will be 100 years too late, unfortunately.
Been hearing this claim for well over 30 years.
Why the heck does it use so much water? It sounds like a very inefficient and stupid design to not have a closed loop.
Honest question, why is AI bad but TVs aren't? What's the environmental cost of millions of people watching Netflix? Using Instagram? Playing video games? Using search engines?
If you wanna get mad at people using computers for their environmental costs why are you starting with AI?
Bitcoin had legitimate reason to be environmentally concerned about, the algorithm was literally based on proof of wasting energy, and that would scale up overtime, AI is not like that.
Can you name the TV company that uses 6% of a sizable city's municipal water supply?
TCL, Sony, Vizio, LG, Samsung, literally all of them easily do in the course of manufacturing them, not to mention the ongoing water usage of all the servers streaming you TV shows.
Again, how is AI different then literally any other popular computer activity? The more popular it is, the greater it's environmental cost.
Really? Which specific city?
Or do you not understand that taking 6% of one specific city's water is very different from taking that same amount of water distributed around the world?
Also, should AI not be criticized for wasting water? Just TVs? Are there other industries where wasting large amounts of water should be ignored?
Maybe any company using up 6% or more of a city's municipal water system shouldn't be allowed to do so regardless of what industry they're in. What do you think?
Which specific city is ChatGPT getting its water from?
Here's a hint: there isn't one, that's referring to it's overall usage, all around the world. It runs in Azure data centers where it is a tiny fraction of their overall compute load and water usage.
Which comment do you want me to reply to?
Given that I already answered this question that should be fairly clear.
The only thing that is clear is that you seem to think you're entitled to multiple responses when you reply to a single post of mine multiple times.
That... and the fact that you aren't denying that you believe corporations should be expected to do whatever they want as long as no one makes it illegal.