By David Adams
Publication Date: 2025-11-27 07:00:00
In an article first published on The Conversation, academic librarian and professor of education LEO S LO says it is important for people to stop viewing AI as just a waste of resources, but to understand the footprint it creates, where the impacts come from, how they vary and what can be done to reduce them…
The conversation USA
Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming up to 500 milliliters of water – a single water bottle serving – for every short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. You use roughly the same amount of water to compose a 100-word email message.
This figure includes the water used to cool the data center’s servers and the water used in the power plants that generate the electricity to run them.
How many AI queries does it take to use the amount of water in a normal plastic water bottle? PICTURE: EyeEm Mobile GmbH/iStockphoto
But the study that calculated these estimates also pointed out that AI systems…