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‘Thirsty’ ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought
(www.thetimes.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It's true, I don't know how large the models are that are being accessed in data centers. Although if the article's estimate is correct, it's sad that such excessively-demanding models are always being used for use-cases that could often be handled with much lower power usage.
This seems a big waste of energy if that 140Wh (504,000 joules) number is correct. That amount of energy is about 2,000 times what it would take to do a very similar thing on a home PC.
Writing a 100 word email with a 7B model would take my PC about 5 seconds, times an increased power use of 50 watts, so 250 joules.
I get that they might be using a much larger model, but the e-mail is not going to be 2,000 times better.