558
‘Thirsty’ ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought
(www.thetimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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140Wh seems off.
It's possible to run an LLM on a moderately-powered gaming PC (even a Steam Deck).
Those consume power in the range of a few hundred watts and they can generate replies in a seconds, or maybe a minute or so. Power use throttles down when not actually working.
That means a home pc could generate dozens of email-sized texts an hour using a few hundred watt-hours.
I think that the article is missing some factor, such as how many parallel users the racks they're discussing can support.
An article that thinks cooling is "consuming" should probably be questioned in all its claims.
I think there's probably something wrong with the math around per-response water consumption, but it is true that evaporative cooling consumes potable water, in that the water cannot be reused until it cycles through the atmosphere and is recaptured from precipitation, same way you consume water by drinking and pissing it out, or agriculture consumes it for growing things. Fresh water usage is a major concern and bottleneck, especially with climate change. With the average data centre using 300k gallons of water per day, and Google's entire portfolio using 5bn gallons per day, it's not nothing.
I would say a model like ChatGPT could use a bit more energy than 7B llama
I like that the 140Wh is the part you decided to question, not the "consumes 1 x 500ml bottle of water"
That was covered pretty well already!
Or maybe it's using Fluidic logic.