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To Build Their AI Tech, Microsoft and Google are Using a Lot of Water (apnews.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the cool-it dept.
An anonymous Slashdot reader shares this report from the Associated Press: The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure. But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption. But they're often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI's most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it "was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines."

Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All of that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings. In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. "It's fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI," including "its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI," said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT. In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren's team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what's in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions...

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work.
OpenAI and Microsoft both said they were working on improving "efficiencies" of their AI model-training.
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To Build Their AI Tech, Microsoft and Google are Using a Lot of Water More

To Build Their AI Tech, Microsoft and Google are Using a Lot of Water

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  • mildly interesting, not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @05:08PM (#63837370) Journal
    There is no problem with using water in a place with water. The problem is if they built a data center in a desert and use the water, or if they are heating up the rivers killing wildlife, or something like that.

    The article does mention that Google has a data center outside Las Vegas for some reason.

    • TFA is misleading in many ways.

      Heating water is not "using it up". It is still available for irrigation and other uses, even if it's warm. TFA even says that one data center is "literally made next to cornfields", where warm water is not a problem. Warm water can encourage crop growth in the spring, lengthen the growing season, and increase yields.

      1.2B gallons is 3682 acre-feet. Farmers in California pay $70/acre-foot for water. So that's $247K, or about the burdened cost of two employees. There are single

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by quonset ( 4839537 )

        If we want to conserve water, instead of closing data centers, we should stop growing subsidized rice in the desert. That's where the waste is.

        Or growing alfalfa which is shipped to countries with too much desert [npr.org] and horses [cbsnews.com].

      • Re:mildly interesting, not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @06:20PM (#63837474)

        Unfortunately, this is part of hysteric reporting on some environmental issues that are not actually much of a problem. Another recent example was the reporting on the Fukushima water release.

        I am unsure whether this is done deliberately to be able to better hide the climate catastrophe we are already seeing the first effects of by reporting obvious nonsense in a similar area to make people think all reporting on climate problems is nonsense (and there are many, many that are all to ready and willing to believe that). Or whether this is people that actually want to do something about climate change, but are too uninformed and hence barke up entirely the wrong trees. In both cases, this is not good at all.

        • Race to the bottom? Idiocracy realized? Meme virus? Dumb and Dumber normalized?

        • This is people turning against the push for generative AI and finding every possible fault with it.

          Which, as far as I am concerned, carry on. Had it been presented for what it is, it would have been interesting to tinker with and help it grow and find some utility in it. As it is, it needs to die a fiery death, in that all the con men and grifters peddling fake AI wares need to lose their money in a spectacular tech stock crash. Maybe that will remind people that this industry used to be about creating good

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            So far generative AI has not impressed me. All it can do is generate lewd images with reasonable quality if you try long enough. Nice application but in no way a game-changer. Just give it some time and it will vanish into its niche, same as LLMs.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jonadab ( 583620 )
          > Another recent example was the reporting on the Fukushima water release.

          That one is Asian politics at work. Specifically, a combination of Sino-Japanese relations (which could be described as "tense", but it would be a charming understatement) and internal politics in the People's Republic of Complainistan.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Not only. There was enough baseless and ignorant hysterics before China even had a press release.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        The economics of this can get.. complicated. What we are really talking about here is grey water, suitable for some uses., but not others, and it has to come from a common pool that other users are also pulling from, meaning increased demand and increased cost. Like any resale, some cost is recouped, but the value is decreased.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          What we are really talking about here is grey water, suitable for some uses., but not others

          This is not grey water.
          YMMV, but about 1.5% of the water circulated within the cooling system would be evaporated and about another 1.5% discharged to sewers - that is the water reported as being used up. The part evaporated will come down as rain somewhere else, but will not recharge the aquifer or reservoir it was pumped from. The part discharged to sewer is not typically fit for grey water use because of the a

      • we should stop growing subsidized rice in the desert. That's where the waste is.

        Where is subsidized rice grown in the desert? If you're talking about California, most of the rice is grown in the Sacramento river valley, which is not a desert.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Heating water is not "using it up".

        It is used up. Refrigeration equipment heats the water up. Cooling towers cool the water down by evaporating some of the circulating water and then blowing down (draining) some more to prevent the amount of dissolved solids to get too high. They add all sorts of biocides, corrosion inhibitors, etc. to protect the piping and equipment, so the discharged water is not suitable for crop irrigation. Still, a once-through system just pumping from a well and then discharging

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > There is no problem with using water in a place with water.

      Right, this is pretty close to the line. (Specifically, I mean the line between the green "water is abundant to the point where farm fields feature ditches along the edges to carry water _away_ from the fields" zone to the East, and the orange "water is a resource that has to be managed" zone to the West; look at a rainfall map of North America, and this line will rapidly become obvious, running across northwest corner of Minnesota down throug

  • It always rains down from the sky somewhere before you use it. And unless you happen to be directly under that rain, you pay dollars for someone to pump it out of the ground or a waterway to deliver it to you, after which it either evaporates back into the sky or gets dumped back into the ground to cool off.

    Talking about cooling water in the same breath as sustainability is just green shaming or green preening that has nothing to do with anything. But so few people understand that it's literally impossible

  • Relevant documentary (Score:3)

    by eneville ( 745111 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @05:19PM (#63837390) Homepage

    BBC panorama

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/... [bbc.co.uk]

  • Imagine if the water was piped to provide hot water to the neighboring buildings. You could shower in smart AI water!
    Some idiot is gonna pay the big bucks for that!

    • It really does seem like a crime to waste the captured heat, never mind the water itself. Obviously they're not heating it enough to crack it into hydrogen and oxygen, but pulling from municipal water and dumping to sewage will waste a lot of resources unnecessarily.

      Even if it's just coming out 'warm', that's still a nice input to have - a quick Google search says the output temp is ~65C or 149F, and that is more than enough for heating a building (or, presumably, getting some pre-warmed water for a hot wa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Even if it's just coming out 'warm', that's still a nice input to have - a quick Google search says the output temp is ~65C or 149F . . .

        What was your Google search searching for? Typical condenser water temperatures are 85F entering the refrigeration equipment and 95F leaving.

    • Actually, that is a good idea. The real issue is not water, but heat.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Imagine if the water was piped to provide hot water to the neighboring buildings. You could shower in smart AI water!

      Besides the fact that this is not potable, or even clean, water suitable for use in a shower, the water temperature is typically too low to be usable for hot water.

  • Noone has explained what these server centers are doing.

    • Collecting personal information based on all the questions you ask and your login information.

    • Cooling towers don't cut water waste, they increase it. The water goes into the air, where it cannot be used until it falls out again at best — and a lot of rainfall simply runs off and is lost before it enters an aquifer, despite the fact that much of it came from one at the "start" of its journey (after sitting there for years to centuries.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Cooling towers don't cut water waste, they increase it.

        Well, they only use up about 3% of the circulating water. That's a lot less than the 100% that a once-thru system would use. Unless you meant to compare a cooling tower system with a less energy efficient all-air system, which you didn't mention.

        • I would assume liquid to be involved at some stage, what that looks like these days I don't know or care to research. But they're clearly using some kind of open system if the water use is this large.

  • Aren't they just using it for cooling? If so, the water doesn't disappear and it probably isn't polluted after use. I imagine some is evaporated during its use and the rest returned, albeit (possibly much) warmer. This may be an issue for fish and other wildlife, but not for water scarcity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cowdung ( 702933 )

      If the climate isn't hot you could heat treat it by letting it cool off in pipes or in some uncovered pool and when it gets cold enough you dump it back into the river.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Aren't they just using it for cooling? If so, the water doesn't disappear and it probably isn't polluted after use.

      No, part of the water is evaporated and part of it is drained. The part that is drained is polluted by the chemical treatment added to the water. Without the chemical treatment you'd have to replace the piping and equipment frequently.

  • This is NOT using up lots of water . The real issue is that it increases the temp of the water, which is not great for the aquatic life. The water loss due to evaporation is relatively minor, as opposed to heating that water.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )
      In a water-based A/C system with cooling towers about 1.5% of the circulating water is evaporated to cool it back down and about 1.5% is drained down to prevent the buildup of dissolved solids. The part that is drained down is contaminated with buildup of dissolved & suspended solids and the addition of biocides, corrosion inhibitors, etc., and is not suitable for reuse or even for discharge into storm sewers.
  • The military is adding nuclear micro reactors starting with Alaska. Smart thing would be to put these in multiple places on Alaska coastal area, run fiber, and then build up data centers there. As they get bigger and population moves in, than switch to SMRs instead . Regardless, Pacific and arctic Oceans along with bearing sea are plenty cold for that.

  • Why using so much water? (Score:3)

    by shubus ( 1382007 ) on Sunday September 10, 2023 @06:54PM (#63837540)
    Seems they have a cooling tower so one would think that the water is being recirculated. So once the system is filled, a fixed amount of water is used, except for possible evaporation. But maybe the cooling tower is getting the water cool enough.

    • That's what I was thinking, but apparently it's more complicated than that. The water picks up impurities during evaporation, making it difficult to simply re-use. It seems possible to use this 'blowdown' water, if it's treated to avoid impurities accelerating corrosion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )
        It is typically not even legal to discharge the blowdown water to a storm sewer. Cooling tower water additives have gotten less toxic over time (they don't typically use chromium-based poisons anymore) but it's still not suitable for wildlife. Treatment at the site would be difficult at best, due to the added biocides and corrosion inhibitors, in addition to the buildup of dissolved and suspended solids.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      1.7 billion gallons sounds like a lot, because most humans are bad at math. In the context of a river, this amount of water per year is really not very much at all. The Ohio discharges that amount roughly every fifteen minutes, give or take a few seconds depending on time of year and other factors. Granted, the Des Moines is not the Ohio (by a wide margin); but they both dump into the same Mississippi, so anyone with two brain cells to rub together can quickly dismiss any effect this might have on water

  • NOOOO STOP USING THE WATER! Once you run it over your hot GPUs it disappears, never to be seen again!

    WE. NEED. TO. STOP. THESE. TECH. BROS.

  • Thatcher: "Kane, I happen to know you used 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water last year!"

    Kane: "You're right, Mr. Thatcher. I did use 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools last year. I expect to use 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools this year. I expect to use 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools next year."

    "You know, Mr. Thatcher. At 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools a year, I'll have to close this place...in 600 million years!"

    Cue horn: wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaaaaah

  • 1.7 B gallons sounds why more impressive than 2500 pools.

  • The use of the word seems to imply that the water gets used irrevocably, disappeared, when in fact it is just drawn for cooling and returned to source, So what?

  • Why not recapture the energy using something like a giant sterling engine? I'm sure the answer is money, but this should be a solvable engineering problem.

  • What's worse is that all those engineers are breathing a lot of air. That is a complete waste of air, a scarce resource. All air use should be metered and controlled by the government and taxed.

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