ChatGPT usage can draw as much water as the state of Rhode Island does in 1.5 days, say The Washington Post and the University of California, Riverside. ChatGPT with GPT-4 uses approximately 519 milliliters of water, slightly more than one 16.9 ounce bottle, in order to write one 100-word email.
This extravagant resource use can worsen human-caused drought conditions, particularly in already dry climates. The water footprint of ChatGPT is calculated based on the electricity needed to run generative AI servers and the water to keep those servers cool.
In a statement, OpenAI representative Kayla Wood said the ChatGPT maker is constantly working to improve efficiency. To mitigate the environmental impacts of AI, companies can run data centers on renewable energy wind, solar, hydroelectric power, or nuclear energy.
Organizations should find ways to incentivize long-term thinking when it comes to what technology employees choose to use day-to-day. Creating an environmental policy — and sticking to it — can increase customers’ trust in a business and help spread out profit into the long term.
Businesses should be confident that, historically, a broadly used technology becomes more and more efficient as computer scientists repeatedly and incrementally optimize software and hardware efficiency over years of consistent research and engineering.