Very fun idea. I do think this puts the water argument into a bit more perspective. Your average person should drink ~3L of water per day, or about 22mL per 11 minute average-length chat that Quili quotes on their site. It's hard to pin down exactly how much water AI uses, but something on the order of 5mL per interaction seems reasonable [1]. So the people doing this are using about 4x more water than an AI model would. Of course, it does matter what happens to that water, whether it turns into water vapor or urine and how much of that water re-enters the water cycle, but it's an interesting comparison.

[1] https://www.seangoedecke.com/water-impact-of-ai/

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seabass 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The people doing this are drinking water either way.

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jrflo 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's true, but the people could also be doing some other job with their effort too. If you factor in the water consumption of the energy used to power their laptops while answering these questions (~30W of power for 11 minutes per interaction, 1mL of water per W of power) you get another 5mL of water per interaction purely in electricity use.

Not saying it's a 1:1 comparison but it puts it in perspective.

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beepbooptheory an hour ago | parent [-]

I can't seem to find the laptop power usage bit in the TFA, is that just supposed to be presumed? Isn't that kind of high?

	▲	jrflo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		30W is on the low end, based off of web browsing and standard office usage. I didn't link my source so here it is: https://solartechonline.com/blog/how-much-electricity-does-l...

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aravpanwar 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Give them Stillsuits from Dune and we have solved everything.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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drcongo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

My urologist told me off for drinking 3L of water per day, said I should be aiming for 3 pints, maybe 4 at the most.

	▲	jrflo an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That would translate to 11mL of water per interaction. Plus the 5mL for running the laptop that I pointed out in my other comment. I think the comparison still holds up with that math.
	▲	jakeydus an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You sure they weren't just confused about imperial unit conversions?