I’ve seen several headlines/stories concerned with AI water consumption, and they struck me as histrionic. Here are some good numbers from The AI water issue is fake by Andy Masley:
Here’s a list of common objects you might own, and how many chatbot prompt’s worth of water they used to make (all from this list, and using the onsite + offsite water value):
- Leather Shoes - 4,000,000 prompts’ worth of water
- Smartphone - 6,400,000 prompts
- Jeans - 5,400,000 prompts
- T-shirt - 1,300,000 prompts
- A single piece of paper - 2550 prompts
- A 400 page book - 1,000,000 prompts
If you want to send 2500 ChatGPT prompts and feel bad about it, you can simply not buy a single additional piece of paper. If you want to save a lifetime supply’s worth of chatbot prompts, just don’t buy a single additional pair of jeans.
This is why Akin’s Law #1 is: “Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.”
Or as I prefer: “Numbers Mrs. Landingham, if you want to convince me of something, show me numbers.”