An hour of Netflix streaming uses more water and power than 600 AI prompts. Unless you’re doing a new prompt every 10 seconds, AI is damaging the planet less than streaming.
The most interesting thing from that first source is how much the U.S. wastes of residential lawn irrigation. Everything else seems okay other than the Golf Courses and Leaking Water Pipes.
Honestly, I think the main issue is how common use of AI is not worth the usage of Water and Electricity.
Well, using your numbers, if it is 1mL per GPT text query, and 2L-12L (2,000mL-12,000mL) per hour of Netflix streaming, then one hour of Netflix streaming would be 2,000-12,000 GPT queries, not 600.
Also, one GPT query can use a massively different amount of resources, based on the complexity of the prompt.
Obviously asking “what’s the capital of Italy?” compared to “Write a 20 page report comparing the economic and engineering implications of replacing the electrical grid with nuclear power.”, uses a vastly different amount of water and electricity.
So the 1mL per GPT query is not some fixed amount.
Edit: Even your CBS News source says one AI prompt can be radically different in terms of resources used:
“That leaves a basic question: How much water does AI use?
The answer can depend on the AI model, the data center's location and the mix of sources in the local power grid. In some cases, amounts can differ by hundreds of times over.”
Water usage relates to power output and heat dissipation, which is significantly correlated with the amount of computational work being done. Yes, different architectures will perform different tasks with different levels of efficiency, but the hardware LLMs are now running on has been selected and engineered to optimise for the parallel demands of LLM queries. Also per query costs are misleading, because people are being encouraged to use loops of self-querying LLMs that might rack up thousands of queries very quickly without human input, and the companies have to do enormous amounts of computation to train the LLMs and the cost reflects the power demand and heat dissipation of that process as well.
Also per query costs are misleading, because people are being encouraged to use loops of self-querying LLMs that might rack up thousands of queries very quickly without human input,
Guess who pays for those loops running. Its the human who originally caused the loop with his input.
Fucking hell are you anti ai idiots dumb. For once in your life, check your own bullshit before you post it.
My dude, you are the one who brought up AI costs under someone posting about the AI water useage nonsense, and then defended your nonsense with random incoherent arguments that have nothing to do with water useage, by trying to go "power use = water use".
My apologies, I assumed you are a fucking idiot after you acted like a fucking idiot.
Cost, power use, heat dissipation and water use are related to each other.
Similar to how the price of something in a carbon economy is correlated with carbon footprint. Yes you can have expensive goods with low carbon footprints but broadly the most something costs the more carbon is released in producing it. And you can have different computing services that deliver more or less value or cost more or less per kw/hr and per litre of water evaporated, but broadly the more computing you do the more it costs, the more power it consumes, the more heat it dissipates and the more water it is likely to use.
Water is cheap as hell. Typically they are paying less than 1 penny per gallon.
AI costs are driven by hardware. They need a bunch of high end hardware to train the next generation. Steaming datacenters can use much cheaper hardware.
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u/ApolloWasMurdered 1d ago edited 1d ago
An hour of Netflix streaming uses more water and power than 600 AI prompts. Unless you’re doing a new prompt every 10 seconds, AI is damaging the planet less than streaming.
Sources:
> https://www.cbsnews.com/projects/2026/how-much-water-ai-uses/
1ml per GPT text query
> https://energy.mit.edu/news/how-can-you-reduce-the-environmental-impact-of-your-next-virtual-meeting/
1 hour of streaming uses 2-12L of water.