Here's Crawford's article in Nature. This stood out for me:

quote:

Generative AI systems need enormous amounts of fresh water to cool their processors and generate electricity. In West Des Moines, Iowa, a giant data-centre cluster serves OpenAI’s most advanced model, GPT-4. A lawsuit by local residents revealed that in July 2022, the month before OpenAI finished training the model, the cluster used about 6% of the district’s water.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

Interesting discussion with Eric Topol and Kate Crawford. Podcast and transcript available.

https://erictopol.substack.com...2&triedRedirect=true

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Here's Crawford's article in Nature. This stood out for me:

quote:

… A lawsuit by local residents revealed that in July 2022, the month before OpenAI finished training the model, the cluster used about 6% of the district’s water.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

If the water used to cool computing clusters can be kept potable recycled to serve residents, that would lower residents’ energy cost as well since the water would arrive at their residences partially heated. There might be a “win-win” somewhere that can be exploited.

Also, on the same topic, for those with free times on their hands and don’t mind waking up early on a Thursday morning, there is a free webinar this Thursday (May 16) talking about the sustainability/environmental aspect of doing AI that might be of interest to some of you:

> Special Presentation on "Is AI the New Plastic? Meta-Analysis of Sustainability as an Ethical Imperative for Digital Technologies" by N. Kishor Narang (Narnix Technolabs, India);
(PDF brochure.)
Free webinar registration at https://bit.ly/FN-AIML-16May2024

Thanks, wtg.

I admit the terms "AI" and "generative AI" make little sense to me.

And considering how AI is being used in Gaza, "conscience" is the last word I'd associate with it.

But I'll read this soon.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Here's Crawford's article in Nature. This stood out for me:

quote:

… A lawsuit by local residents revealed that in July 2022, the month before OpenAI finished training the model, the cluster used about 6% of the district’s water.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

If the water used to cool computing clusters can be kept potable recycled to serve residents, that would lower residents’ energy cost as well since the water would arrive at their residences partially heated. There might be a “win-win” somewhere that can be exploited.

Conversely, the plant could be supplied with non-potable (purple pipe) water from the sewage treatment plant like they use for landscape water in CA. Maybe it already is.

E. Des Moines is a small-ish town of 68,000 residents so I’m not surprised the AI farm uses 6% of the water. I do wonder if the water they use is to replace evaporation from cooling towers or they’re running a single pass system. If they are the city should raise water rates until the plant installs cooling towers. Perhaps they should raise water rates anyway if this consumption is a problem.

I don’t understand why there aren’t more server farms in Cleveland. Lord knows there’s plenty if water, power is cheap and the infrastructure is still in place from when the city had 3X the population.