“My Attention Dies In Darkness”

Comparing AI water usage to the "real economy"

how bad is AI water usage really

3 min read
#AI

Preamble

We now have audited data on water consumption for AI. Over the 18 month lifespan of Mistral Large 2, a 128B model, all water usage (including chats, training; hardware & data centers) took as much water as 678 US households use yearly. Each additional query is 45 mL. (Fixed a conversion error)

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In June 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman provided the first official estimate, claiming that each ChatGPT query uses approximately 0.000085 gallons of water. Based on 1 billion daily queries, this translates to: 321,760 liters per day (0.32 million liters) Equivalent to filling about 2,145 bathtubs

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Some of y’all aren’t scared enough about running out of potable water. We need it to survive, our pets and farms do too. Data centres are using it up and wasting it. They project we could run out by 2039. Thirteen years. Stop asking AI questions, it’s not worth it.

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Scary. Scary.

There are some people who are hella worried about AI water usage.

…And they’re usually not bullshitting up the numbers… usually.

Comparison

To be fair, water is really important and water security has been deteriorating for some time.

But how uniquely bad is AI?

thing water usage what it measures sause
potato 287 L/kg global avg water footprint https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/interactive-tools/product-gallery/
beef 15,415 L/kg (94% green, 4% blue, 3% grey) global avg water footprint https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/interactive-tools/product-gallery/
steel 14∼17 m3/t14\sim17\,\mathrm{m^3/t} water intake/consumption https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1026806
car 52∼83 m3/car52\sim83\,\mathrm{m^3/car} freshwater consumption across the life cycle https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es2040043
plastic (PP) ∼59 L/kg\sim59\,\mathrm{L/kg} water footprint of polypropylene https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/11/11/1791
hpv vaccine ∼2.57 L/dose\sim2.57\,\mathrm{L/dose} direct water consumption https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c13822
hpv vaccine ∼14 L/dose\sim14\,\mathrm{L/dose} lifecycle water-consumption potential https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.5c13822
water-based paint 206 L/kg embodied water from hybrid LCA https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/EPiC_database_-_Water-based_paint/9979991
oil-based paint 197 L/kg embodied water from hybrid LCA https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/EPiC_database_-_Water-based_paint/9979991
gemini 0.26 mL/prompt0.26\,\mathrm{mL}/prompt water consumption per Gemini text prompt https://blog.google/intl/es-es/noticias-compania/iniciativas/cuanta-energia-consume-la-ia-de-google-hemos-hecho-los-calculos/
mistral large 2 45 mL/400tokens45\,\mathrm{mL}/400 tokens lifecycle water consumption of inference https://mistral.ai/news/our-contribution-to-a-global-environmental-standard-for-ai
gpt-3 ∼10∼50 mL/response\sim10\sim50\,\mathrm{mL}/response modeled operational water consumption https://doi.org/10.1145/3724499
chatgpt ∼0.32 mL/query\sim0.32\,\mathrm{mL}/query OpenAI estimate of water consumption/query https://x.com/tariquesha1/status/1945575162956693824

so I guess the “real economy” uses a lot of water too, AI ain’t not stranger in “wasting water”.

Yes, water security is important and maybe building data centers exclusively in US deserts with poor water supplies is not the best PR decision you could make. Perhaps they could place it in a place with more water. such as Japan (w/ a humidity sucker for the water PLS).

But blaming AI alone on it isn’t really fair. I guess you could blame global warming for it but solely pinning it on AI is a tad bit of a stretch and could distrat from actual measures that could make water availability more sustainable.

Y’all ain’t even at my level, i’ma let my lil homies ride

I’m just an idiot so here are some good reads by people who actually has a brain: