The ChatGPT has been the cynosure of the year as it gained prominence worldwide last year amongst billions of users for its uncanny ability to respond to a range of user queries with human-like language.
Within a short time span, it has demonstrated the ability to summarise research studies and answer logical questions. It has also cracked business school and medical exams meant for college students.
The tech giant has partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI and invested $10bn in the company.
“Extremely large” Water Consumption by AI Models: Researchers
However, this time around it is not in the news for its technological prowess, but the “extremely large” water consumption of data centres used to run it
As per the experts it is doing all of what it can, but on the flipside it is consuming staggering amounts of water.
As per the scientists, including those from the University of California Riverside in the US, there was a previous study that shed light on the carbon footprint of such AI models, however the water consumption has somehow “remained under the radar”.
As per a new, yet-to-be peer-reviewed research, posted as a pre-print in arXiv, estimates that a conversation of about 20-50 questions with the AI chatbot in a single system may “drink” a “500ml bottle of water”.
For this research, a framework to estimate the amount of clean freshwater consumed for generating electricity to power data centre servers and for cooling servers to run AI models was developed.
As per the scientists, in the training of GPT-3 alone, Microsoft may have consumed a stunning 700,000 litres (185,000 gallons) of water. Notably, this water is enough to produce 370 BMW cars.
As per the scientists, its not just the ChatGPT by OpenAI, but also other AI models like Google’s LaMDA which can consume a “stunning” amount of water in the order of millions of litres.
Researchers Beseech Responsible Water Consumption in the light of social responsibility & Global Water Shortages
In the light of global water shortages, the researchers urged companies running AI models to “take social responsibility” and address their own water footprint.
The study read that “AI models can, and also should, take social responsibility and lead by example in the collective efforts to combat the global water scarcity challenge by cutting their own water footprint”.
It mentioned that “While a 500ml bottle of water might not seem too much, the total combined water footprint for inference is still extremely large, considering ChatGPT’s billions of users”.
The newly-launched GPT-4 AI system which has a larger model size, as per the reseachers, shall have the water consumption numbers increased by “multiple times” for the newly-launched GPT-4 AI system which has a larger model size.
The estimated has been done by scientists, however it is to be mentioned that there is hardly any public data available to reasonably estimate the water footprint for GPT-4.
Hence, scientists have also called upon for the increased transparency of the water footprint of AI models, including better disclosure of information about operational data and the effectiveness of water consumption during the runtime of such systems.
Researchers concluded that “AI models’ water footprint can no longer stay under the radar – water footprint must be addressed as a priority as part of the collective efforts to combat global water challenges”.
While all of us have been going gaga about the technology, this finding is quite alarming and worrisome, as tensions of global water shortages rise.
Also, it is important that humans find a better way of coexistence with the nature to not raise a havoc.
