Post AYEN3ChMVHuzCEe5ZI by downey@floss.social
(DIR) More posts by downey@floss.social
(DIR) Post #AYEKAmwnpTQFmknDqS by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T19:45:12Z
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Every time someone talks to ChatGPT for 20 exchanges or so ...... Microsoft's servers use a half-liter of freshwater to cool downAI is *thirsty*My essay on some implications of this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e A "friend" link, in case you don't subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e?sk=f5b2ea10c649a34236577139fecfd86a
(DIR) Post #AYEKKcB2jBfdHH8h5k by paninid@mastodon.world
2023-07-30T19:45:57Z
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@clive https://mastodon.world/@paninid/110804712051678298
(DIR) Post #AYEKoH9tRGS6mFkF7I by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T19:52:27Z
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@paninid 😂
(DIR) Post #AYEKuQfyxvVK26gkWu by brinnbelyea@fosstodon.org
2023-07-30T19:52:35Z
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@clive How much electrical energy is consumed?
(DIR) Post #AYEL5b6qW0APZoZyTY by DanaBlankenhorn@journa.host
2023-07-30T19:53:43Z
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@clive Many hyperscale data centers recycle the heat generated in their operation. In Georgia, Google uses it for water purification.
(DIR) Post #AYELCOkQsCz1GVL280 by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T19:56:03Z
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@DanaBlankenhorn Cogeneration is super cool!Rolling it out a lot more would help for sure
(DIR) Post #AYELJFOU38xCHVL0QC by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T19:56:28Z
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@brinnbelyea Quite a lot — they are figures in that paper I link to
(DIR) Post #AYEM3X1gpE1aHukKLg by lippykidmusic@mstdn.social
2023-07-30T20:06:23Z
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@clive That's a great piece Clive. When I was in the industry I was discussing some of the early research into Big Data and the negative environmental side effects with various colleagues. We had differing levels of concern on this. As AI is exploding its clear this is a significant challenge. I appreciate AI is an unstoppable force, but I hope the same level of energy will be directed into tackling the obvious, growing, environmental challenges it presents x
(DIR) Post #AYEMBxKAvuyUAPPSdM by mike@thecanadian.social
2023-07-30T20:07:54Z
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@clive Are most data centres not closed loop chilling? And you're using an evap cooling tower are you not just sending fresh water back into the atmosphere? Are we looking for a problem that's not there?
(DIR) Post #AYEMoKxRVsweT74ucy by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T20:14:53Z
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@lippykidmusic Glad you liked it!It's definitely a resource issue we're gonna have to grapple with It would really help if states and municipalities started seriously charging industry for what their freshwater is really worth ...
(DIR) Post #AYEMw1OA9d9K5pEyMS by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T20:16:06Z
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@mike Nah, read the paper ... closed loop is part of the heat exchange getting the heat to the cooling towers; the cooling towers evaporate, and thus consume, water
(DIR) Post #AYEN3ChMVHuzCEe5ZI by downey@floss.social
2023-07-30T20:16:11Z
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@clive Thank you for this work and helping raise the alarm.Related ICYMI:https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html
(DIR) Post #AYENMDaNQds7RzRero by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T20:19:20Z
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@downey Yes! Those stats -- Google's use of water in The Dalles tripling over five years -- are pretty intenseWhat's more, the fact that the newspaper had to *sue* the *city* to compel the city to release those figures illustrates one of the big problems in grappling with the water use of data centers ...If cities seriously priced their scarce freshwater at what it's worth, it'd give tech firms a reason to be more efficientBut cities don't
(DIR) Post #AYENZMch8gz7FBnW88 by downey@floss.social
2023-07-30T20:23:22Z
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@clive "but the jobz"....
(DIR) Post #AYENrUnXU3WJoJW35E by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-30T20:26:41Z
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@downey ugh
(DIR) Post #AYEWLjCnHVWIoaFu4W by DanaBlankenhorn@journa.host
2023-07-30T22:01:41Z
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@clive Cloud was all about saving money, in any way possible. Cogeneration was one way.
(DIR) Post #AYEkenMJSfz2Ybh5Xs by mlanger@mastodon.world
2023-07-31T00:42:00Z
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@clive @MikeTRose I'm wondering if the data center they're building in my town (Malaga WA) will be used for AI. We have cheap power and plenty of water.
(DIR) Post #AYEmnroEU6K2sGCsS0 by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T01:06:04Z
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@MikeTRose @mlanger Maybe, yeah!
(DIR) Post #AYF9aEFCZa51LYHrhA by kentborg@social.tchncs.de
2023-07-31T05:20:58Z
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@clive Don't forget the carbon dioxide that is released.
(DIR) Post #AYFcbK4JIirQN34BuK by ErikJonker@mastodon.social
2023-07-31T10:46:30Z
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@clive …but compared to the water footprint of a hamburger it’s not that bad ?
(DIR) Post #AYFkOBi7rZkcJmwClU by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T12:12:56Z
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@kentborg 100%
(DIR) Post #AYFkb8qjoOlhD28vAm by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T12:16:09Z
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@ErikJonker That’s one way of looking at it, yes!Or — speaking as someone who eats hamburgers — hamburgers are even more unsustainable uses of freshwater, as plenty of folks have been warming us for years
(DIR) Post #AYFnI7sTV8jGYTZzjk by detritus@todon.eu
2023-07-31T12:46:15Z
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@clive how does it compare to other computing uses? Why focus on AI. I would think any compute-heavy activity at scale would have similar resource consumption. Not that I’m defending AI, I think it’s tremendously harmful, for many other reasons.
(DIR) Post #AYFqY5wgkgS93hrAnI by pkraus@berlin.social
2023-07-31T13:22:45Z
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@clive how much water would asking the same number of questions of a "normal" search engine require? 500 ml sounds like much, but without a reference value it's a bit hard to judge.
(DIR) Post #AYFr82SHCtYierlrM0 by expertenkommision_cyberunfall@mastodon.social
2023-07-31T13:29:13Z
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@clive @BlumeEvolution zum Thema Wasser
(DIR) Post #AYFs2OALfpIAD4FsUy by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T13:39:28Z
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@pkraus Good question! I didn’t see that figure in the paper — either they didn’t include it or I missed itMy *suspicion*, for which I have no evidence, so take it with a grain of salt, is that inferencing with a model is much more computationally intensive than a traditional search, if only because the latter benefits from two decades of engineering and computer science that has chased efficiencies at scale
(DIR) Post #AYFsEKsvhKeDVcnviy by nuncio@mstdn.social
2023-07-31T13:41:08Z
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@clive Every time someone talks to AI, an angel loses its wings.
(DIR) Post #AYFsVbN3emWTYv86Eq by ed_donofrio@sfba.social
2023-07-31T13:24:35Z
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@downey @clive your local government isn't working for u if they spend over a year keeping data secret.
(DIR) Post #AYFsVc7Us7fZswrBce by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T13:44:44Z
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@ed_donofrio @downey Very true
(DIR) Post #AYFtN1KPsWLHPpMkwS by Leuenberg@cyberplace.social
2023-07-31T13:54:20Z
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@clive I intuitively found this figure overblown, so I dug in your source and I see that the authors are basing all their calculations (3.8L/kWh) on a figure in a WSJ article! Is that serious ? I wouldn't trust a paper whose authors do not even bother providing a citation to a proper study, especially when their core statement is based on this source.I do hope that the WSJ article has a citation itself and would appreciate if someone with an access could provide it.
(DIR) Post #AYFtrRUv95NBGYmm9o by ncweaver@thecooltable.wtf
2023-07-31T13:58:53Z
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@clive That estimate says your queries are using .3 kWh of electricity or so, so it is about 2 cents of power and the water that gets boiled by that (since effectively all energy consumed by computers ends up as heat).But I don't believe it, assuming 10s of runtime, that means your query used 180 servers for that 10 seconds. LLMs are hungry but not THAT hungry.
(DIR) Post #AYFuqU5c7j6uy93VhY by dzwiedziu@mastodon.social
2023-07-31T14:10:50Z
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@cliveOh great, *another* way that AI is killing us.But it's not the AI that is facilitating the killing…/me turns dramatically to the camera.
(DIR) Post #AYFwSVjkXyk12KWcfw by veirling@union.place
2023-07-31T14:28:59Z
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@clive Scraping content from real people is thirsty work!
(DIR) Post #AYFxftRxnFisIg9Prk by OmegaPolice@hachyderm.io
2023-07-31T14:42:32Z
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@clive So the spike in Atlantic surface water temperature we see this year is not due to climate change, after all, but AI workloads? 🤪
(DIR) Post #AYG16TifrmPoBDKrku by panamared27401@mstdn.social
2023-07-31T15:20:33Z
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@clive @downey One reason they don't is that doing so would push a lot of poor families over the edge. A three-tiered pricing structure (residential/commercial/industrial) might fix that -- or might generate a lawsuit on 14th Amendment grounds (IANAL).
(DIR) Post #AYG3YFVEW8vA6VQ0Ey by tehstu@hachyderm.io
2023-07-31T15:48:06Z
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@clive A brand new source of massive computational output is a bit bonkers in this day and age. I hope their plan to become "water positive" comes to fruition, this whole thing seems at odds with the company that did things like making Windows update and consoles in standby more energy efficient.
(DIR) Post #AYG6mrX4DkpVy1w5vU by ncweaver@thecooltable.wtf
2023-07-31T15:49:20Z
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@jwatt @clive It depends. Data centers on a river or ocean will direct heat-exchange. Other than that you use evaporation to dump heat, all AC type systems on any scale do ("cooling towers").However, the water use is in the noise compared to say agricultural use for alfalfa. A single acre of alfalfa will use 4 acre-feet/year, so 5 MILLION liters of water to grow cattle feed (that is commonly shipped to Saudi Arabia where growing it is banned).
(DIR) Post #AYG6msB7oos9yGg5Me by ncweaver@thecooltable.wtf
2023-07-31T15:51:15Z
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@jwatt @clive To get a sense of scale, the Imperial Valley in CA (which is absolute desert) has 130,000 acres of alfalfa planted! If you care about water use, care about agriculture, and if you care about agricultural use, alfalfa is a god-damned ecological crime.
(DIR) Post #AYG6mslHeNnPmPaxiy by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T16:24:40Z
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@ncweaver @jwatt Yep — and almonds are right up there too
(DIR) Post #AYG6vVZ3GatoROzFR2 by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T16:25:58Z
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@downey @panamared27401 Yep, you wouldn’t want to price it high for poor families I’d figured tiers would be legal but IANAL either!
(DIR) Post #AYG7Gqp5QGpSSFfEbg by clive@saturation.social
2023-07-31T16:30:05Z
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@veirling Lol yes
(DIR) Post #AYGJvdPFPSIYAMn97I by edwiebe@mstdn.ca
2023-07-31T14:59:17Z
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@clive Is the water evaporated? I still haven’t been able to learn where the water goes once it’s been warmed.
(DIR) Post #AYGUeEqwXmk4aXeaTQ by georgemsavva@genart.social
2023-07-31T20:52:04Z
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@clive to be fair, I drink at least that much tea per 20 interactions
(DIR) Post #AYGqlfomsslHEpazb6 by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-01T00:59:36Z
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@edwiebe Yep evaporated into the open airIt goes back into the precipitation cycle
(DIR) Post #AYGrDxe8C2Qwdi6FVI by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-01T00:59:53Z
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@georgemsavva Heh yes
(DIR) Post #AYK3sdGCfrFmD7woBE by Fungi455@mastodon.social
2023-08-02T14:10:57Z
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@clive right and I'm sure that water just magically disappears?! Why is everyone in denial of the water cycle lmfao