Why does ChatGPT ‘drink’ massive amounts of water?

A number of people around the world use ChatGPT to gain knowledge on various issues. Platforms like these which work on the principle of Artificial Intelligence (AI) use a lot of data to churn out answers in seconds.

But at the same time, they also use a lot of water!

As per a report on IndiaTimes, researchers from the University of Colorado Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington have noted that a lot of water goes into keeping the data centres for such AI tools cool.

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The publication further quoted a paper titled Making AI Less Thirsty which is yet to be peer reviewed, to note that just to train GPT-3 alone, it required 700,301 litres of water.

Interestingly, this is the same amount of water that is required to cool a nuclear reactor!

While ChatGPT can give you answers in a few seconds, it needs to 'drink' an equivalent of a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20 to 50 questions and answers, notes the publication.

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"While a 500ml bottle of water might not seem too much, the total combined water footprint for inference is still extremely large, considering ChatGPT’s billions of users," the authors noted.

With such humongous amounts of water being used, AI companies need to address their own "water footprint ".