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Nantucket E-Books

@gerrymcgovern I'll take this as a learning moment: the water evaporates... isn't it just getting returned to the water cycle?

21 comments
Gerry McGovern

@saxicola
A human is using ChatGPT and that human needs to drink water whether they do the thinking or ChatGPT does it for them. So, we need to add the water AI uses and the water humans use while using AI. It's additive. And with each new tech innovation the water and material demand grows exponentially. @nantucketebooks

Saxicola βœ… 🏴󠁧󠁒󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

@gerrymcgovern @nantucketebooks
Ah but, I tend to sweat more in stressful situations as opposed to letting someone (or something) else do the work for me. :)
Ok, I appreciate the differential is minimal though.

Saxicola βœ… 🏴󠁧󠁒󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

@gerrymcgovern @nantucketebooks
This assumes the human is still alive after losing their job to AI and starving to death in an alleyway somewhere.

Acin on .art

@saxicola @nantucketebooks @gerrymcgovern

By my rough calculation, a human goes through about 4% of the water ChatGPT uses if the person or bot is answering a page of questions.

That's the same as what the Google search usesβ€”1/25th of the evaporation for a chatbot.

Gerry McGovern

@shadowfals
There is nothing--so far--more efficient and economical than the human brain and body to do stuff. I did some calculations a while back and found that remembering something was so less polluting and energy intense than searching a search engine for it.

If you have to burn energy, burn your own energy.
Think first.
Remember first.

@saxicola @nantucketebooks

@shadowfals
There is nothing--so far--more efficient and economical than the human brain and body to do stuff. I did some calculations a while back and found that remembering something was so less polluting and energy intense than searching a search engine for it.

If you have to burn energy, burn your own energy.
Think first.
Remember first.

argv minus one

@gerrymcgovern

I don't know about your brain, but mine tends to lose stored information over time. As it ages, its storage capacity shrinks ever further.

I imagine this is why written language was invented. Words on paper don't fade so quickly.

@shadowfals @saxicola @nantucketebooks

argv minus one

@gerrymcgovern

As for search engines, the point of them is to find information I need when I don't know where to find it. How else would I do that? By walking up to random people on the street and asking them questions? I'd be lucky if none of them violently attacked me, let alone gave me useful answers.

@shadowfals @saxicola @nantucketebooks

Acin on .art

@chaosmonkey @saxicola

I started with how much time a human subject matter expert might take to write out quick answers like if chatting with a curious friend or a story writer. This is from my personal experience with authors, tech researchers, avid forums helpers, and educatorsβ€”compared to what I know of ChatGPT. So, you know, it's a guesstimate.

For the comparable queries with at least chatbot-level accuracy: 15 minutes, or a quarter of an hour.

(...continued in next post)

@chaosmonkey @saxicola

I started with how much time a human subject matter expert might take to write out quick answers like if chatting with a curious friend or a story writer. This is from my personal experience with authors, tech researchers, avid forums helpers, and educatorsβ€”compared to what I know of ChatGPT. So, you know, it's a guesstimate.

Acin on .art

@chaosmonkey @saxicola

I needed something quick for how much water the model person would use. That was "an average person needs eight cups of water a day".

8 cups / 24 hours = 0.3333 cups/hour

A quarter of that is 0.0833 cups / 15 minutes.

1.000 litre = 4.227 cups

0.0833 / 4.227 = 0.0197 litres

But I'd needed half a litre, not a litre in the conversion, so the number is doubled for 0.0394.

As a percentage, that's rounded to 4%.

Martijn

@saxicola @shadowfals I always welcome and appreciate open, honest, transparent and civil discourse / reactions based on facts and logic. πŸ˜€

The calculation has definitely given me food for thought.

Martijn

@shadowfals @saxicola I appreciate the calculation and by extension your transparency. ❀️

Personally I would probably have started with the premise of "the average person requires at least two litres of water per day" but that's what I'm used to.

I think I'll try out some similar calculations. Maybe create a site where people can compare energy expenditure between various things like "the average google search" or "three minutes of youtube"

Acin on .art

@chaosmonkey where I live, cups are more commonly used as measurement. I had to look up the conversion to litres. Starting with litres would definitely be simpler!

Gerry McGovern

@nantucketebooks Data center water evaporation is a toxic process. And the water that evaporates is lost to the locality. Many data centers are in water stressed areas.There are many other water systems used by data centers, where the water is treated with a whole range of chemicals, becoming wastewater, which must be treated.

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