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‘Thirsty’ ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought (www.thetimes.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Writing a 100-word email using ChatGPT (GPT-4, latest model) consumes 1 x 500ml bottle of water It uses 140Wh of energy, enough for 7 full charges of an iPhone Pro Max

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks ago

The study that suggests 10-50 interactions with ChatGPT evaporates a whole bottle of water, doesn't account for the fact that cooling systems are enclosed....

...and that "study" is based on a bunch of assumptions, which include evaporation from local power plants, as well as the entire buildings GPT's servers are located in. It does this as if one user is served at a time, and the organizations involved (such as microsoft) do nothing BUT serve one use at a time. So the "study" (which isn't peer reviewed and never got published) pretends those buildings don't also serve bing, or windows, or all the other functions microsoft is involved with. It instead assumes whole buildings at microsoft are dedicated to serving just one user of ChatGPT at a time.

It also includes the manufacture of all the serve and graphics cards equipment, even though the former was used before ChatGPT, and will be used for other things as well... and the latter is only used in training.

You can check the study out yourself here:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271

It's completely junk. Worthless. Even uses a click bait title, and keeps talking about "the secret water foot print" as if it's uncovering some conspiracy. It's bunk science.

P.S It also doesn't seem to understand that the bulk of GPT's training was a one time cost, paid in 2021, with one smaller update in 2023.