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Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

The energy and/or water use comes up from time to time so I did a little digging:

The average ChatGPT query uses 0.34 Wh (0.12 kJ, 0.3kcal) and 0.32ml of water.

This means if you ask it one question every two minutes, you're using about as much energy as a 10W LED lightbulb.

If you use it 5000 times, you'll waste the energy of a medium-sized pizza, and water amount equivalent to how much you'd need to wash your hands after that pizza.

Sources:

Energy and water use: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity

Typical water pipe flow (with perlator/aerator): 3.5 L/min: https://www.enu.hr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/7.-Racionalno-... (US stats are 4x that: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/environment/edu...) Time required to properly wash hands: https://www.hzjz.hr/sluzba-zdravstvena-ekologija/pravilno-pr...

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> This means if you ask it one question every two minutes, you're using about as much energy as a 10W LED lightbulb.

Meanwhile your idle desktop PC and monitor are pulling 20-100W each.

People tend to forget that doing the work the old fashioned way uses energy too. Presumably for a longer time for equivalent results.

Let's do this in reverse. xAI is planning to buy an additional million Blackwell GPUs right? That's more compute than we all need to ask a question every minute or two.

now provide the numbers for the training

Those numbers from Sam Altman may be correct, but he's hardly a disinterested observer so we should be a little wary of accepting them as-is.

True.

I don't think he'd outright lie, but possibly the calculation is ... stretched ... to fit the narrative.

Let's call it a small pizza, then :)

The persistent popularity of discussing how AI is supposedly bad for the environment actually gives me the opposite impression.

Ever since reading Ryan Holiday's book, Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, popular controversies like this always make me wonder who benefits from their continued discussion.

Every time someone talks about how AI is using energy, that's free, viral publicity advertising AI, keeping us obsessed with talking about it for one reason or another. The controversy makes it stickier in our brains. It makes it feel relevant even if you aren't using the product yet.

And yes, when done correctly, a leading figure in AI acknowledging the allegation and responding to it helps to further our obsession with the idea. The reassurance might not be to assuage, but rather to keep us engaged.

The reasoning is highly motivated in both directions. I would just look at other sources. I haven't seen any source with alarming numbers, though.

Why do you think the anti-AI side has highly motivated reasoning?

AI is polarizing. People who don't like it really don't like it. This wouldn't be the first anti-AI argument that was more about sentiment than actual analysis. Again, I think the climate impact argument here is basically imported from the argument against crypto (where I enthusiastically join the skeptics) and doesn't apply here. Either way, my point is, just go look at different sources. Simon Willison has linked to some on his blog.

Every time water use comes up I feel compelled to mention that water is 100% recycled and 100% recyclable.

Assuming you have free energy available to do it...

It literally falls from the sky.

Unless we crack efficient rain water harvesting, its not. Also good water that goes up in the air and falls back wjth other pollutants makes our food worse.

Dams aren’t exactly an esoteric technology?

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