@gerrymcgovern I'll take this as a learning moment: the water evaporates... isn't it just getting returned to the water cycle?
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@gerrymcgovern I'll take this as a learning moment: the water evaporates... isn't it just getting returned to the water cycle? 21 comments
@saxicola @gerrymcgovern @nantucketebooks @gerrymcgovern @nantucketebooks @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 usesβ1/25th of the evaporation for a chatbot. @shadowfals @nantucketebooks @gerrymcgovern @gerrymcgovern @shadowfals @nantucketebooks 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. @argv_minus_one @gerrymcgovern @shadowfals @nantucketebooks 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. @chaosmonkey @shadowfals @nantucketebooks @gerrymcgovern 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%. @shadowfals @chaosmonkey @saxicola @shadowfals I always welcome and appreciate open, honest, transparent and civil discourse / reactions based on facts and logic. π The calculation has definitely given me food for thought. @chaosmonkey @shadowfals @shadowfals @saxicola I appreciate the calculation and by extension your transparency. β€οΈ 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" @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! @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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How much water would a human evaporate doing the same thing?