Environmentalists warn that large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day — equivalent to the needs of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Washington Post claimed that a 100-word email use roughly one bottle of water.
On the other side of the debate:
SE Gyges argues the statistic about the bottle of water is based on unrealistic assumptions.
Bentham’s Bulldog writes, “The environmentalist case against AI completely falls apart upon even cursory examination of the facts.”
Andy Masley, the staunchest critique of the concerns about AI water usage, says “On the national, local, and personal level, AI is barely using any water, and unless it grows 50 times faster than forecasts predict, this won’t change.”
I offer my own projection: AI will eventually consume 10^41 – 10^47 gallons of water — up to a hundred trillion trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans.
How much water is out there? Water is the third most abundant molecule in the universe, after H2 and CO. The Solar System alone contains ~10^26 kg of water in planets, moons, and comets — about 100,000 times Earth’s oceans (Kotwicki 1991). There are ~10^11 stars in the Milky Way, each plausibly endowed with a similar complement of icy bodies. And the galaxy’s molecular clouds contain vast reservoirs of water ice on dust grains. A reasonable estimate for total water in the Milky Way is a few x 10^37 kg — about 10^16 Earth-oceans.
How many galaxies will the AI consume? The cosmic event horizon — the boundary beyond which even light-speed travel cannot reach, due to the accelerating expansion of space — sits at roughly 16.5 billion light-years (Ord 2021). This encloses about 20 billion galaxies, roughly 5% of the observable universe. However, the future AI may bump into competitors before reaching the cosmic event horizon. Robin Hanson’s grabby aliens model estimates that each “grabby civilization” — one that expands at a significant fraction of light speed and visibly transforms its territory — would eventually control 10^5 to 3 x 10^7 galaxies before meeting others.
The water budget of future AI. Putting it together, with ~10^37 kg of water per Milky-Way-equivalent galaxy, and 10^5 to 2 x 10^10 galaxies, this gives 10^42 to 2 x 10^47 kg of water — between 10^21 and 10^26 Earth-oceans.
I’m not sure if this is intended to be a joke, but the primary reason there’s “AI Water usage” is that it seems to be a straightforward way to cool territorial data centers. The data centers that Elon Musk wants to put into orbit don’t use any water. If you have a Dyson sphere that power a giant AI datacenter I would expect it not to have any water usage either.
I predict that the AIs will actually consume a trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans.
The OP is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it gets at a real peeve of mine. Whenever AI safety guys write op-eds about how silly the environmentalists are, they should add to the beginning, middle, and end of the article something like:
“I think that within 20 years, AI alone will be consuming more energy than the entirety of human civilisation consumes today. Its effects on the environment will be more transformative than the agricultural or industrial revolutions. It may result in the extinction of all organic life.”
And then they can chuckle about how the environmentalist did statistics bad or whatever.
Projecting AI Water Usage.
Environmentalists warn that large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day — equivalent to the needs of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Washington Post claimed that a 100-word email use roughly one bottle of water.
On the other side of the debate:
SE Gyges argues the statistic about the bottle of water is based on unrealistic assumptions.
Bentham’s Bulldog writes, “The environmentalist case against AI completely falls apart upon even cursory examination of the facts.”
Andy Masley, the staunchest critique of the concerns about AI water usage, says “On the national, local, and personal level, AI is barely using any water, and unless it grows 50 times faster than forecasts predict, this won’t change.”
I offer my own projection: AI will eventually consume 10^41 – 10^47 gallons of water — up to a hundred trillion trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans.
How much water is out there? Water is the third most abundant molecule in the universe, after H2 and CO. The Solar System alone contains ~10^26 kg of water in planets, moons, and comets — about 100,000 times Earth’s oceans (Kotwicki 1991). There are ~10^11 stars in the Milky Way, each plausibly endowed with a similar complement of icy bodies. And the galaxy’s molecular clouds contain vast reservoirs of water ice on dust grains. A reasonable estimate for total water in the Milky Way is a few x 10^37 kg — about 10^16 Earth-oceans.
How many galaxies will the AI consume? The cosmic event horizon — the boundary beyond which even light-speed travel cannot reach, due to the accelerating expansion of space — sits at roughly 16.5 billion light-years (Ord 2021). This encloses about 20 billion galaxies, roughly 5% of the observable universe. However, the future AI may bump into competitors before reaching the cosmic event horizon. Robin Hanson’s grabby aliens model estimates that each “grabby civilization” — one that expands at a significant fraction of light speed and visibly transforms its territory — would eventually control 10^5 to 3 x 10^7 galaxies before meeting others.
The water budget of future AI. Putting it together, with ~10^37 kg of water per Milky-Way-equivalent galaxy, and 10^5 to 2 x 10^10 galaxies, this gives 10^42 to 2 x 10^47 kg of water — between 10^21 and 10^26 Earth-oceans.
I’m not sure if this is intended to be a joke, but the primary reason there’s “AI Water usage” is that it seems to be a straightforward way to cool territorial data centers. The data centers that Elon Musk wants to put into orbit don’t use any water. If you have a Dyson sphere that power a giant AI datacenter I would expect it not to have any water usage either.
I predict that the AIs will actually consume a trillion times the water in Earth’s oceans.
The OP is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it gets at a real peeve of mine. Whenever AI safety guys write op-eds about how silly the environmentalists are, they should add to the beginning, middle, and end of the article something like:
“I think that within 20 years, AI alone will be consuming more energy than the entirety of human civilisation consumes today. Its effects on the environment will be more transformative than the agricultural or industrial revolutions. It may result in the extinction of all organic life.”
And then they can chuckle about how the environmentalist did statistics bad or whatever.
The first source link is empty.
One bottle of water per 100-word AI prompt seems to be extremely high. I don’t know what the source is. Claude says it is https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/18/energy-ai-use-electricity-water-data-centers/, but it is paywalled. I am curious to see the precise claim.
Fixed. I can’t find the unpaywalled Washington Post article, but here’s a post which disputes the claim directly: The Biggest Statistic About AI Water Use Is A Lie
https://archive.ph/Xrh01