Abstract:
In a podcast released on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back when asked by the host to respond to resistance to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, including concerns about water consumption.
Although data centers have a reputation as water guzzlers, modern data centers use roughly the same amount of water as office buildings, Altman said.
"This has been a widely circulated statement and is difficult to disprove, but I don't think it stands up to any scrutiny," he added.
He mentioned a 2024 report from the state government of Virginia, a hotspot for building data centers. A committee of the local government found that while some data centers used significantly more water than other facilities, most data centers used the same or less water than the average large office building.
But in fact, water consumption has always been one of the core issues against data centers. A report released by Gallup in May showed that 71% of Americans expressed opposition to the construction of data centers in their area, and 70% of them said they were particularly concerned about the impact of data centers on the environment. Half of the respondents cited impacts on resources, with 18% citing water resources specifically.
A Business Insider investigation published last year found that data centers are exacerbating the West's water crisis, in part due to water-guzzling evaporative cooling technology.
However, data center developers are using a variety of cooling methods, including some closed loop or waterless systems, and prioritizing efficient water practices to accommodate local water supplies, according to the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group.
Altman also compared ChatGPT’s water use to growing California almonds, a water-intensive crop. He said,
It takes more water to grow one almond in California than thousands of ChatGPT queries,
And added: "Most people who eat 12 almonds at once do not feel that they have done anything terrible with water resources."Although it is impossible to verify Altman's statement, the Chinese media pointed out that the statement that "the water consumption of growing an almond is several orders of magnitude higher than the water consumption prompted by the AI chatbot" is basically consistent with the existing data.
Altman said that the average water consumption of a ChatGPT query is about 0.32 ml, while Google said that the average text prompt water consumption of the Gemini application is 0.26 ml. A 2019 study by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers found that growing an almond in California requires an average of 3.56 liters of water, slightly less than one gallon of water per almond.
He further stated that although people's water concerns about artificial intelligence have been exaggerated, he believes that it is the responsibility of the industry to change public perceptions.
“I think the right way to get people to like something is to provide them with value,” he added: “The industry has a lot of work to do in terms of how to make these products easy to use and how to make people get great value from them.”
Comments