ChatGPT queries water footprint almond comparison
That “AI is just software” idea gets complicated once you look at the physical side. Every ChatGPT query leaves a mark, and the stat goes like this: 38,000 of them need about the same water as one California almond. So the real conversation becomes about cooling water and computing power, plus the infrastructure limits that come with them. When you're running at that scale, making things efficient stops being a bonus and starts being the whole point.
Transkript (en)
you know i saw this thing going around about the the water usage of chat gpt and it was like every time you run a single chat gpt query it's like you know you run your shower for like six hours and the water never comes back and it's just it's done i don't have the exact calculation in front of me but i i think the real number is something like doing this from memory it might be wrong but it's close for every 38 000 chat gpt queries um that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California which is like really and this is like the full-on you know total true water accounting not just what's running in one data center there's a question of like where this came from because the people that are scarfing down 12 almonds at a time don't feel like they're doing something horrible from a water perspective for the most part um it is true that data centers at one point used evaporative cooling um but they have have not done that in a long time. Like if you look at a modern, very large data center, it uses the like equivalent amount of water as an office building in terms of, you know, people like running the sinks and the toilets and whatever. So that has been a robust meme and difficult to disprove, but I don't think holds up to any scrutiny.
