ZAP
Everything to cool data centers. The electricity “bill” is also painful: generating 100 words consumes, on average, 0.14 kWh, the equivalent of powering 14 LED lamps for one hour.
The use of advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the world, but it also brings with it a heavy environmental cost.
Models like ChatGPT, used extensively since its launch in 2022, consume large amounts of resources. The numbers are alarming.
Each 100-word text generated by ChatGPT consumes around 519 milliliters of water. For some it may seem small, but the impact scales in an instant.
Estimates indicate that if just 10% of the US workforce requested a simple text service from OpenAI on a weekly basis, annual water consumption would exceed 435 million litersenough to power the homes of a million people for more than a day, according to one by The Washington Post with researchers from the University of California, cited by .
This consumption is related to the cooling servers in data centerswhich use water-based systems to dissipate the heat generated by calculations.
In addition to water, AI has a very high energy cost. Generating 100 words consumes, on average, 0.14 kWh, the equivalent of powering 14 LED lamps for one hour. Multiplied by millions of global users, this consumption contributes significantly to the pressure on electrical networks. In regions like Texas and Georgia, the expansion of data centers has worsened energy supply problems and is already a concern for locals.
Tech giants are recognizing the need to change. THE Microsoftfor example, signed agreements to use nuclear energy, while Google has committed to replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. But progress has been slow.
