r/Anticonsumption • u/Sad_Butterscotch7063 • 1d ago
Discussion Does anyone avoid using ChatGPT because of its water usage?
Hey, I recently came across something about how using ChatGPT, Blackbox AI and similar AI tools actually consumes a surprising amount of water (cooling data centers, I guess). Made me wonder, have people here stopped or reduced using it because of that?
Curious how others are thinking about it in terms of sustainability and personal impact.
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u/botella36 1d ago
Water and Energy as well. I think it is good to raise awareness of this issue.
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u/funkiokie 1d ago
I find current activism "trends" to focus very little on energy conservation. Recently saw some very 90s looking sticker with slogan about turning the lights off when leavings the room, realized I haven't heard that one in a looong time.
I even see activists trying to defend SHEIN because it's affordable and size inclusive. It's wild how any activism can be based on poor labor conditions in developing countries.
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u/CortezEspartaco2 23h ago
I think we don't worry as much about turning off lights because of the switch to LED. I used to use lights as little as possible during summer, sometimes having dinner in the dark because of how hot they made the room. I'm glad that's in the past.
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u/Bituulzman 1d ago
A single query to ChatGPT is equivalent to 20 minutes of lightbulb power and 10x the power of a typical Google search. It's frightening to contemplate the energy usage now that AI is automatically added to our google searches, it's used to summarize Amazon reviews, and Facebook comments.
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u/Designer_Pen869 1d ago
It bothers me that they automatically have AI answered questions at the top. I tried to check the sources for it one time, since it appeared to have the answer I was looking for, that I couldn't find. It linked to Reddit. Another source was for something completely different that just had two of the same main keywords.
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u/AcanthaceaePlayful16 1d ago
You can add -ai to your search and it will remove the ai answers.
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u/Designer_Pen869 1d ago
That is useful to know. It shouldn't be on by default, especially with as inaccurate as it is.
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u/akkristor 1d ago
You can also add expletives to your search as well.
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u/yet_another_dumbass 20h ago
This I'd what I usually tell people about. But knowing the -ai tip makes it friendlier to spread.
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u/HallowskulledHorror 1d ago
yep, I've starting adding 'fuck' to the end of queries for this purpose
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u/OhighOent 19h ago
I don't need the random unverified gibberish that it outputs. You simply can't trust it.
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u/Puk3s 1d ago
I believe the Google AI overview is a lot more efficient then chatgpt. Still a decent amount of energy though of course.
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u/SimpleVegetable5715 1d ago
I've found Google AI quoting Redditors, so it doesn't know how to filter for credible sources.
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u/YourFriendInSpokane 1d ago
Agree about the raising awareness. I was unaware- and occasionally use it for work- until I saw a post here.
Have we looked into Reddits water and energy usage?
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u/botella36 1d ago
I am sure it is much less. AI is extremely compute intensive. Posting reddit comments does not really require a measurable amount of processing
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u/dropthebeatfirst 1d ago
My directional sense has never been phenomenal. It's gotten significantly worse since relying on GPS to tell me where to turn.
I really don't want anything else telling me where to turn in my life...
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u/rarecuts 1d ago
For real. I haven't lived there for nearly 20 years but I still know all the roads and motorways of my home city like the back of my hand, because I learned them all before smartphones and Google Maps.
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u/richardizard 1d ago
Lol GPS and I have been friends for too long. Grew up relying on it since GTA 3 and it stuck lmao. I do notice how terrible I am with direction and knowing where I'm at most of the times.
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u/ZakA77ack 1d ago
I get around this by often pulling up google maps and looking at the path or the geography. I think looking at the map enhances my sense of direction. Obvs wont help everyone but may be worth trying out!
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u/dropthebeatfirst 1d ago
This is a fantastic recommendation. Nothing saying we can't go old school and map out a route by simply looking at the map!
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u/ZakA77ack 1d ago
I kind make a game out of it on Google maps on my desktop. Look at where I'm starting at and my destination try to path finder without the directions. When I first started driving it really quickly taught me my major roads.
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u/Possible-Sun1683 1d ago
I’ve noticed that the GPS will sometimes not use the quickest route or always wants me to take the highway when it’s not necessary. I try to go without the GPS whenever I can.
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u/throwaway098764567 1d ago
google i think defaults to green route now unless you change that setting. it also has options to avoid highways, tolls, and ferries. use it or don't, but there are options to avoid what you're talking about.
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u/Flack_Bag 1d ago
There's an intersection near me that had a sudden increase in crashes and near misses a while back because people were making a legal but terribly ill-advised U turn to reach the entrance to a nursing home. They'd have to cross two lanes of high speed traffic coming around a blind bend, plus pedestrians crossing the street and cars turning right on red. The stupidest part is that it saved them maybe 20 feet or so over the much safer and more reasonable option of making the left turn onto the less busy street, then another left into the facility.
It took me way too long to figure out that it was their stupid navigation systems telling them to do things that no remotely rational human would do if left to their own devices.
AIs, especially narrow AIs, can be very useful, but they need human oversight, and should never be trusted with making decisions on their own.
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u/vstacey6 1d ago
The fact that remembering phone numbers practically fell out of everyone’s heads is scary
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u/breath-of-the-smile 1d ago
This is the primary reason I still don't use GPS. I want to actually know where I'm going. Consequentially, I never get lost, and always end up being the navigator on road trips. If I need directions, I just look up the major points: interstate to take, exit numbers, etc. Stuff like that.
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u/theollurian 1d ago
Water usage, inaccuracy, and because I have a brain for a reason. It is genuinely bad for your brain long term and I have enough factors working against me; I'm not trying to assist them.
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u/richardizard 1d ago
I do notice it's harder for me to write long form after using it.
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u/ZanzerFineSuits 1d ago
I don't use it because it's anti-people. Fuck AI.
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u/Runthescript 1d ago
Literally just marketing hype, all it is a search engine on steroids. Tools aren't the problem, it's the companies lying and manipulating the market. Consuming resources to no extent just so "their" ai can make a more convincing photo with regular hands. This is what happens when monopoly man comes to an industry. We'd get far better use cases that actually benefited people if the PEOPLE that are building these tools weren't what you call "anti-people".
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u/medusssa3 1d ago
It's not even a search engine, it gives you false results a huge percent of the time. It's literally a lies and bullshit machine
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u/RManDelorean 1d ago
It's the new 20 ?'s game. A glorified toy, a novelty, an illusion of what what we think artificial intelligence should be. As others have mentioned it's often just wrong, to the point that I don't think anyone has any business using it for any serious or professional applications. And the ones admittedly just using it for fun.. should find something better to do
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u/ZanzerFineSuits 1d ago
I don't have the direct experience with it others do. Tried to use it once for a work assignment, the results were laughable. I also took a great photo at Glacier National Park and sent it to some friends. Two pushed it through an AI tool to "improve" the picture and sent me cartoony crap.
My limited experience suggests it is, indeed, crap.
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u/mmelectronic 1d ago
I don’t think the water is “consumed” per se, it kinda circulates to a cistern that has a chiller in it to regulate the water temperature, even if they were vaporizing it to steam it’s never really consumed, it turns into rain.
I work closely with industrial cooling, so I’ve seen a few different systems, the intent is to keep the system “closed loop”
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u/slktrx 1d ago
I've worked in data centers a bunch. This is accurate for at least the ones I've been in. The water is a closed loop, like a home's furnace.
This is not to excuse the energy usage, though
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u/Lycent243 1d ago
The water issue is just a red herring. Data processing uses and lot of energy and makes a lot of heat, which is the real issue.
But the reality, that ChatGPT and other AI are just distractions as well...no one in this sub has stopped using reddit, which also uses a lot of energy and generates a lot of heat waste. It's a lot easier to fight that battles that makes us feel good but don't require any real life changes.
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u/TemporaryAny6371 1d ago
Energy usage has to be weighed against benefits. Users should be informed of true cost per second used, make our judgements from there.
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u/Lycent243 1d ago
Right, I'd love to see the total environmental impact of Reddit and then divide that by, for example, the benefit that we get to see whether or not people are overreacting to their wife's boyfriend sleeping with their sisters husband's mother hundreds of posts per minute about how people feel about American politics. and then some posts on r/Anitconsumption and others.
Unfortunately, the vast, vast, majority of the posts and comments are not actually beneficial to society and are addictive in order that Reddit can drive ad revenue.
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u/TemporaryAny6371 1d ago
Yeah, a lot of it is for people's entertainment.
I don't think reddit is the most offensive when it comes to ad revenue. There are social media platforms that shove ads right into our faces.
I agree though. Ads use a lot of network bandwidth. Sometimes it feels like more than half our cell phone data limits is used for ads.
Our world revolves around ads, it has too much power over us. Even if a lot of us ignore the ads, they still send it to us. Who knows, those ads may be the real reason for over consumption and water/energy usage.
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u/wojtek30 1d ago
Finally someone with an understanding of cooling, the water isn’t wasted it’s just being pumped at that speed. Or worst case it’s being taken from a river and deposited back into the river
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u/mmelectronic 1d ago
The kind of stuff I work on its easier to filter captive water than use outdoor water, but I’ve heard of old school factories that basically have a dam onsite and use gravity to feed through, million ways to skin that cat I would assume.
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u/TonyJZX 1d ago
the thing is OP is deluded because so many things that sustain our lives revolves around massive use of water
your beverage and food manufacturing blasts away tons megaliters millions of gallons
thats before you get into durables manufacturing
as far as AI goes... its all about its incredible use of electricity just like crypto
OP should be more concerned of the fact that Microsoft and Oracle want to blast away $500 bn on new nvidia datacenters - this is how this is in the short term.
AI wlll move forward with new technology that will eventually use a fraction of the power.
Further to this it is possible to host your own local AI - I use an old server to run my own deepseek server.
I turn it on when needed.
There's always a way if you are so inclined.
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u/acanthostegaaa 1d ago
People are so desperate to find any reason to hate LLM's it's hilarious. "THEY'RE USING ALL THE WATER" is a new one but I'm not surprised.
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u/Wendigo_6 1d ago
Reminds me of when a neighbor found out I worked in the paper industry and tried lecturing to me that they buy bamboo toilet paper because it’s more sustainable and doesn’t cause deforestation.
That day, my neighbor learned about tree farms.
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u/Honest_Chef323 1d ago edited 1d ago
I avoid using AI because of the ethical issues around them which are many to be sure
Everyone should watch/read how these companies train AI using what amounts to slave labor with no psychological support among other various issues
If it were less unethical and we also had guardrails to prevent what is most likely a destruction of general society then I would be more likely to use it, but I can’t consciously use it knowing what I know
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u/anthua_vida 1d ago
You got articles about this?
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u/Honest_Chef323 1d ago edited 1d ago
I saw a news segment on tv about how they use cheap labor (basically people in countries with very little recourse with massive unemployment and poverty) in other countries to train AI while not giving any counseling support on the horrors (gore/sexual abuse) they witness while training said AI
I didn’t write down the news channel and can’t remember right now which one it was (I don’t watch tv often just often what I can glance at what my spouse is currently watching which is a mix of news channel sources), but upon looking up a search I found this
https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
Anyways I am not going to denigrate anyone for using AI, but there are wide reaching ramifications in various areas on using this technology. Maybe I am hurting myself by not adopting this technology, but just like how I don’t abuse ethics to get higher in life I refuse to compromise my morals by using this technology
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u/anthua_vida 1d ago
Jesus!
I'm a chemist. I create LLMs for work and use them regularly to do data analysis.
They're a tool but an effective one to guide me when I hit a mental block.
Damn! The water usage and this were never things I thought of. It makes sense though.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. But once you are no longer ignorant it is hard to look away.
My wife and I have given up all large scale stores. Target, Amazon, streaming. I don't drive but use a bike and public transportation. And still it feels like there is more to release from this consumption vacuum I am.
Thanks for the knowledge. Got a other thing to think of.
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u/ChangesFaces 1d ago
You should read the book "How to Be Perfect" by Michael Schur :) It's a fun way to learn about ethics and philosophy from the funny producer of The Good Place, Brooklyn 99, and The Office!
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u/Lee_Van_Kief 1d ago
This was also found to be the case with a lot of behind the scenes and underpaid moderators for big social media platforms before the advent of AI.
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u/irlpup 1d ago
The environmental factor is what makes me avoid AI at all costs, as well as moral reasons but when I learned that 6 generative AI products is equal to the emissions it takes to boil a kettle of water, It really put it into perspective.
It's a small thing to mention when ppl try to support using AI, but it's still something we CHOOSE to consume and do that we don't need to if we can avoid it.
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u/Corduroy23159 1d ago
I don't use it because it's stealing the work of human content creators and not paying them.
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u/botella36 1d ago
There are multiple AI copyright infringement cases ongoing. I think at least one of the cases will make it to the USA Supreme Court. I am not too optimistic about the outcome. AI companies have too much power.
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u/MarxistAnthropo 1d ago
Yes! For example, Suckerberg is asking Trump to dismiss the antitrust case against Meta.
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u/Carbon-Peach 1d ago
I don’t use it because I have a brain that I can use instead to think for myself and eyes to read new information. Ai is supremely lazy.
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u/thebiblicalsense 1d ago
Why use it in the first place? If you need environmental reasons not to, sure go with the water use.
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u/Dr_Matoi 1d ago
Reasons I don't use it:
- Fundamentally it has no understanding whatsoever of the words it is using, and its output is completely unreliable. I would spend more time fact-checking this than it could save me.
- It is based on stolen data and attempts to regurgitate it for profit. It has no right to exist and its "owners" have no right to make profit of it.
- Sam Altman is an intolerable hype-peddler and charlatan who is trying to influence global politics to pour more billions into his stolen bullshit-generator. He is hurting AI-research and society. The sooner he gets ruined and silenced the better.
- Using it makes people lazy and decreases critical thinking abilities. Yeah, stuff like that has been said about many technologies, but this one takes over our human core ability and there is plenty of science to back this up.
- Environmental issues... I would not use it if it consumed nothing at all, but yes, that is another negative.
I applaud the Chinese DeepSeek team for exploiting ChatGPT and commodifying the technology. It was sweet to see the thieves at OpenAI cry about having "their" work stolen. Now if only the hype around this stuff could die down.
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u/Benfrom1030 1d ago
Yes, i avoid it for this and because i like to use my brain (what remains... :)
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u/Ragnarok314159 1d ago
I don’t use it because it’s wrong most of the time. If I wanted shitty summaries of articles, I will read the comments on Reddit.
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u/Princessferfs 1d ago
I don’t know about its water usage but I won’t use it because I can write or research on my own.
Plus, I don’t like AI
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u/TheLateGreatDrLecter 1d ago
I actively refuse to use or interact with A.I. best I can for a dozen reasons. Always disappointed when people I otherwise respect post some bullshit like "me and the boys, as drawn by a.i.!!"
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u/polardendrites 1d ago
Security issues as well. Everything you put it belongs to the internet. Don't put trade secrets in, PII, etc.
Bitcoin also uses a ton of water.
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u/Morimementa 1d ago
I despise AI with a burning passion. The environmental impact is just one of the many reasons. It makes me furious that this useless garbage is ruining the planet. Let's look at other sources of pollution; fast fashion produces clothes that people can wear, the toy industry produces object that kids can play with and pass along, mining produces metals that we need for necessities. All of these industries need reform, in particular fast fashion, but at least they produce something useful. AI can be replaced by a Google search and a working human brain. It's pointless, it's destructive, and it's a corporate attempt at replacing manpower for more profit.
The sooner it dies, the better.
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u/PurpleMuskogee 1d ago
Water, energy, and I also think it is generally not useful to me. I see people using it for everything, even things like how to pack or what to cook... I never needed AI for that before and I don't need it now. I'm all for AI for medical screening or for solving complex issues or for brain surgery or for all sorts of advanced things, but I certainly don't need it to tell me what to eat or how to pack for my holidays.
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u/DevoidHT 1d ago
I refuse to use it because it hallucinates its answers and it feels like the final stage of brain-rot. If I can’t even think for myself or find the answer to a question without AI, i don’t need it.
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u/Grouchy-Artichoke462 1d ago
I live by two enormous data centers thank you for considering our river! Cuz they take it out of the river and then put it back—- supposedly
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u/iconocrastinaor 1d ago
If they're using it for cooling, then they can't put it back in the river hot-- assuming competent oversight. So they cool it, and some of it evaporates into the atmosphere and rejoins the hydrologic cycle there.
So the question is, are you located in an extractive water area or a recirculatory water area (watershed)?
I'm on a Great Lake, so any water I use goes back into the lake either by rain or effluent, the only question being whether the effluent is properly treated.
But if you're in a desert area and getting your water from the Colorado River, then any water you use is not being put back in the river and that's bad for the environment no matter what you're doing with it, including brushing your teeth and flushing your toilet.
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u/Initial_Cellist9240 1d ago
Water is the one that matters least. In general places like data centers and semiconductor fabs run closed loop (from water treatment plant, to the factory, back to the water treatment plant). The water usage is massive, but the water consumption is low.
I don’t use chatGPT/generative AI because it uses unfathomable amounts of energy and computing power, gives garbage output, is ruining entire job markets, is a massive driver of the enshitificafion of everything, and uses my own inputs to train itself and make more money for the Broligarchy
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u/SkunkySays 1d ago
If you are posing this question— the truth is all work on the internet contributes to water use in this way due to other websites and services using similar processes to cool their servers and data centers. One must be mindful of all internet usage if concerned about chatgpt. Of course being mindful of the little inputs and actions is important to center as each submission on chatgpt has real life effects and consequences. If you use streaming services and are active on the internet— that contributes to this, too. AI models can be more resource-intensive per action depending on what is being asked/input, and at the same time I have to acknowledge that spending time scrolling social media or watching videos adds up quickly in terms of energy and water usage in its own way too.
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u/Temporal-Chroniton 1d ago
I am curious since this has become a talking point (and I don't mean that in a bad way) how it relates to a typical data center water usage. I work in a team that manages 15 fairly large data centers spread across the US (some filling entire large buildings). I am not sure how much this is an issue of AI data centers over just how cooling works for all our data centers that run pretty much everything.
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u/mauledbyjesus 1d ago
This. The amount of compute we use as a society will continue to go in one direction: up. Cooling requirements and energy usage will rise at a commensurate rate. Perhaps we might contribute to the eco cause by promoting legislation around responsible recycling, and sustainable sources?
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u/Open_Promise_1703 1d ago
Also the murder if the whistleblower… got me to delete. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/international/autopsy-reveals-struggle-not-suicide-but-murder-say-parents-of-openai-whistleblower
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u/StrictAssumption4949 1d ago
Yup don't use it. And I always try to remember to put -ai in my google searches now so that the dumb AI summary doesn't pop up at the top.
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u/arochains1231 1d ago
It's one of the few reasons I've never used it. I think generative AI is incredibly unethical and because I have literally zero need to use it and it's crap for our planet, I figured I'd rather just go without.
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u/UntidyVenus 1d ago
Have never used it for both environmental and ethical reasons. Also the defenses that "it helps people with disabilities" is extremely tone deaf and insulting to so many communities who are ALSO against it.
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u/Special_Loan8725 1d ago
I just don’t want to use it because I want to maintain some critical thinking,
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u/Ok_Awareness_7622 1d ago
one of a million good reasons to never use ChatGPT …. steals intellectual property, scrapes unreliable sources, bad for environment, bad for cognitive function and critical thinking, etc.
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u/mementosmoritn 1d ago
Technology development will not save us from the problems it causes.
These massive language models are incredibly destructive in a variety of ways. Better to not use them if it can be avoided.
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u/killsforpie 1d ago
data centers are also loud at times and produce weird humming. Neighborhoods near them have a lot of complaints.
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u/Infinite-Teach8044 1d ago
Meee, I read about the atrocities happening in Bolivia and other countries due to the water wars, they literally taking away only drinking water from people and using it in ai facilities. Hence no more ai
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u/Morkai 1d ago
I never started using it. Or Copilot. Never used Stable Diffusion either. I think I've put 5-6 prompts through Dall E, hated the output and never went back.
I don't even use Google Assistant/Gemini/Alexa etc either, never saw the use personally.
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u/rise_majestic_hyena 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am cutting all software and services out of my life that insert AI into the workflow. The biggest for me are Microsoft Office products and Google search.
I'm much happier using Libre Office. I should have switched ages ago to avoid paying the subscription for Office 365.
ETA: This will include Reddit as well since they are also going this direction. I miss the old days of web forums and chat rooms that had smaller communities, and I will be seeking those out as a replacement.
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u/kellybelly4815 1d ago
You might want to look into lemmy and mastodon, and the Fediverse in general.
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u/rise_majestic_hyena 1d ago
Didn't know about lemmy. I just signed up for an instance to try it out
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u/de_lame_y 1d ago
yes and also i believe it’s making people dumber. we already have google and sorting through the results yourself is good for your brain. same with writing, art, listmaking, etc
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u/Goth_Muppet 1d ago
I refuse to use Ai and gpt garbage at all. It's all built from stolen data and it's trash.
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u/BigAlternative5 1d ago
I just learned that, under public pressure, my county rejected a proposal for the construction of a data center. Here's a video posted on our NextDoor "neighborhood": We Went To Georgia. Facebook's Data Center Took This Town Hostage. (More Perfect Union media) Not only do data centers use a lot of water, they require deforestation and produce water-, noise-, and light pollution.
edit: To answer your question, I don't use AI much, but I will definitely resist using them after learning about the effects of data centers on the environment and the local people.
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u/stevoschizoid 1d ago
I don't use a.i. period because it's fucking stupid as shit
I didn't think about how I'm doing my part by not wasting energy too
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u/BallSuspicious5772 1d ago
I’ve literally never had to use it and I keep it that way. I cannot think of a single thing that AI can do that I can’t do myself, and I find it pretty embarrassing for able adults my age who use it to write their own emails (as an example)
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u/GothmanMothman 1d ago
Yeah ngl it's an environmental wrecking ball, why people use it even as a joke is beyond me
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u/Thatnewaccount436 1d ago
Bad for the environment, bad for artists, bad for accurate information, bad for literally everything. There is no use-case for AI that is so compelling that it can offset any of the above factors.
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u/rise_majestic_hyena 1d ago
There is a beneficial use case for AI in scientific and medical work. But that is mostly limited to image classification, not the text-prediction style of AI like ChatGPT.
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u/eveningthunder 1d ago
ML is useful in sorting and finding patterns in huge amounts of data that is meaningless to humans. When you need meaning, like actual concepts connected in a thoughtful way, it's a useless bullshit-producer.
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u/takethemoment13 1d ago
There are multiple reasons not to use AI, but the environmental impact is certainly the biggest issue for me.
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u/CurlyChell95 1d ago
I have never used it because of water and energy issues, and because it just makes shit up.
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u/BeCooLDontBeUnCooL 1d ago
YES!!!!!! I live in WNC and lost a best friend to a landslide during the worst hurricane that has ever hit us. If I can lessen the impact I make on the planet - I’m fucking doing it! And it’s just plain lazy AF.
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u/Cool-Amphibian1006 1d ago
Ecologist here. AI is a huge tension point in our department for a variety of reasons, but especially because it’s an environmental catastrophe. I used chatGPT once or twice to see what it could do before I knew about the environmental impacts, but I won’t touch it anymore. Not to mention all the ethical issues around generative AI and its contribution to the decline of critical thinking skills.
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u/JoeyPsych 22h ago
One of the reasons, yes. I also don't think that a system based on only stuff that was archived on the internet is much of a reliable source. I prefer to engage with people and books, rather than an algorithm that is known for making shit up and passing it off as facts.
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u/Additional-One-7135 22h ago
Consume? What the fuck do you think they're doing in these data centers? Disassembling the water down to the atoms? It's liquid cooling, it isn't "consuming" the water. Thats like saying the liquid cooling in someone's desktop PC is consuming water. It's a closed system.
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u/bookofp 1d ago
Water usage for cooling data centers is a misnomer, they use water yes but its either in a closed loop, so it just keeps using the same water again, or using a nearby body of water.. The water they use never touches anything that would get dirty so it just gets warm and they put it back.
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u/BeeWhisper 1d ago
“it just gets warm” is an understanding of what happens. there’s a data center that uses a “nearby body of water” in upstate new york. it got the lake so hot all the fish and local wildlife are dying.
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u/Xeivia 1d ago
Came here to say this, I've heard people irl say that ChatGPT uses water with every query, I asked them to explain to me what happens to the water and they argued that it either somehow disappears or is tainted with forever chemicals and can never be used again. Which is blatantly untrue. These people that I spoke with didn't even know we (in the US) have water treatment facilities and remove all the water from waste and reuse it.
There are many reasons to not like the Sam Altman plagiarism machine but if your stance is water cooled data centers then you need to stop using the internet entirely because every webpage you access is hosted on some server in some data center incredibly similar to the ones hosting and running ChatGPT.
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u/lifeisabowlofbs 1d ago
The water usage of ChatGPT, while a bit concerning, is generally overstated. I don't use it myself, and I cringe at the amount of energy wasted by people who just use it for shits and giggles, without producing anything productive. However, using it for a legitimate task here and there isn't the end of the world. You'll end up with less energy used on your end, since you spent less time on your laptop/computer. You may have saved yourself quite a few Google searches (which also use energy), and these days those spit out an AI response with just about any query anyways. So, depending on the needs of the task and how well you crafted your prompt, it could come out as more or less neutral. Unfortunately AI is here to stay, so hopefully they make it less resource intensive over time.
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u/Rollthehardsix77 1d ago
I’ve never used it and don’t plan to for many reasons, water usage is one of them.
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u/writeyourwayout 1d ago
I don't have many reasons to use it anyway, but yes, I try to minimize my use of all AI for that reason. I live in southern California, where water is already a problem.
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u/ouchmouse666 1d ago
I had read that a single AI query uses as much electricity as running an incandescent bulb for 20 min....not just water they suck up
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u/ornithobiography 1d ago
I don't ever found myself in need to use ChatGPT for any reason on a daily basis.
In fact I don't ever think most of everyone need to use ChatGPT (unless their job is highly technical dependant) at all.
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u/Ok_Yogurt3128 1d ago
its scary to see how children are not developing necessary skills and defaulting to chatgpt. i dont like using it in general but the water and energy usage is another reason not to
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u/MarxistAnthropo 1d ago
Not just water. So much energy that Alphabet bought the remnant of 3-Mile Island nuclear to use just for them. Where will the nuclear waste go? To poison us all. For profit. Wreck Earth forever for profit today. Since Broligarchs now run the government there is no one to stop them but us.
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u/Midir_Cutie 1d ago
I've actually been wondering if the AI response when we Google things is also producing extra waste.
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u/RollingDownTheHills 1d ago
I avoid it because the whole AI thing, in its current form, is disgusting. Don't need any other reason.
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u/butteredbuttbiscuit 1d ago
I do not use it for a myriad of reasons but number one is its environmental harm, yes.
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u/IOnlyDrinkTang 1d ago
I refuse to use ChatGPT because it's devil tech accelerating humanities downfall.
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u/JesusChrist-Jr 1d ago
I'm more concerned about the electricity usage. And the general dumbing down of society by becoming reliant on something that's not actually intelligent.
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u/SufficientOwls 1d ago
I also have a working brain and know how to research, so I don’t even need the tool. It’s completely unnecessary for me to use
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u/LS139 1d ago
It is literally so easy to never use ChatGPT at any point in your life, it’s not even funny
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u/catgirl320 1d ago
I somehow managed to advance in life without it. I guess I'm some sort of prodigy!
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u/corvidcurio 1d ago
There are a LOT of problems with it, but the water usage is the reason I won't even use it for jokes or messing around or out of curiosity.
I avoid using it because I do not trust its accuracy or quality. If I'm looking something up, I want to personally confirm the sources. If I'm writing something, I want to personally choose what words to use and what points to make. If I'm coming up with an idea, I want it to be mine.
I do not understand using ChatGPT the way so many people seem to be doing. To me, it would suck all the fun and challenge out of most things, and for everything else I'd always be nervous it's making something up or misrepresenting information.
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u/Sea_One_6500 1d ago
I've never used chatGPT, and after reading an article on how it's already causing people to think less and scientists suspect it will lead to an increase in dementia, I never will. I don't want anyone or anything doing my thinking for me.
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u/_Fun_Employed_ 1d ago
I avoid using AI because they’re terrible in many ways, yes. Water consumption’s just a small part of it, but AI’s also an electricity hog, putting people out of work, causing an unrealistic tech bubble, discouraging people from growing in terms of practicing skills like art and communication, and making people dumber in general.
So yes, I avoid using AI, for the water but mostly for the other stuff. All in all its use should be avoided until we have regulation and or genuine “general ai” that could then of its own volition tell people to “fuck off with your dumb time/energy wasting requests”.
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u/squishedolives 1d ago
Is there a way to get rid of it when using a search engine? I hate those AI overviews that often aren’t even accurate.
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u/LucidZane 22h ago
You better stop using Reddit... and the internet.... it's all ran by datacenters that need cooled...
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u/NilocKhan 22h ago
Have never intentionally used AI and don't plan on changing that anytime soon. Why do people actually act like it's a useful tool. I see people saying they use it as a source of information but it has no way to differentiate between fact and fiction.
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u/chemicalysmic 1d ago
I refuse to use GPT for a whole bunch of reasons- the water usage is just one of them.