How come local LLMs still use water?

if it’s AI does that make it a water powered water calculator?

just for the record other things ppl do like taking long showers and eating meat use a LOT more water so if u really want to make an impact do less of the more impactful things not to say that ai models arent environmentally harmful, but just less so than some other things in everyday life :)

@Gideonthegreat it’s not AI I wrote the code myself, the calculator works like a normal one I just added the values and necessary logic code

@KIR_KOS LLMs use water because they have data centers. The issue isn’t the AI or systems themselves it’s just the data centers that are the problem, because regardless of models and stuff they’ll still heat up.

@aayanalikhan09 Yeah ik, a lot of people already practice those things tbh and I’ve seen a lot of water recycling campaigns for those scenarios so I’m not as worried because it’s really known and countries with a sense for sustainability have already stipulated water recycling measures. It’s just because people are more system reliant now even a Google search nudges Gemini to process your search whether or not you want it to and I’m just speaking locally because of how people ik don’t rlly know the exact measurements so besides me doing my own thing I just needed an excuse too to try out web development. So in summary, yeah you’re right and thnxs for being acutely aware. Idk if you’ve seen this like youth campaign that’s going around you should prolly pitch in on there as well

@Coco local LLM means it runs on your computer. no datacenters involved.

@KIR_KOS well not during regular use but during the developing the hosting and downloading and finally updating and patching data centers are involved. but they still use far less water because regular use solely relies on your PC’s CPU and innate cooling fan so yeah I understand where you’re coming from buh get my point. it’s cuz of these same reason that the model uses the lowest amount. so yeah you’re right but yeaa u get wat i mean, no?

@Coco sure but i still think that saying that it uses 2ml of water/prompt is very very wrong

@KIR_KOS man I’ve cm bck here more than I anticipated. Buh ur wording shows that u acc visited my site so I am happy tbhhh buh then again…

@KIR_KOS As I reread this tbh your tone suggests you think I’m exaggerating…. Like I’m acc srry if it wasn’t clear buh I do get where ur coming from ri? Buh like i wanna say that it isn’t an exaggeration, it’s even generously phrased if you ask me. Like how will I explain this… lemme go bck to basics if sooooooo the main water use in cloud AI comes from data center cooling (evaporative cooling systems that literally evaporate water into the air) yeah that’s clear, no? Now let’s move on to our issue, local models don’t use that at all. What local models DO use is electricity, and yes we do know that power plants use water. But it’s like a small 7B model running on a laptop for a single prompt draws maybe 0.01-0.02 kWh, at about roughly 1-2 liters of water per kWh for electricity generation, that works out to about 10-20 mL max. I rounded down to 2 mL to account for the fact that many users run on laptops with efficient chips (like Apple Silicon) that draw far less power, and not all electricity comes from water-intensive sources.
Compared to cloud models at 20-25 mL per prompt I’d take that to be about a 10x+ difference, my point isn’t that local is zero, it’s that it’s dramatically less. Even if the real number is 5-10 mL, it’s still a fraction of cloud usage. You do also know that ml is milliliters ri, that’s rlly little like medicine cup sizes yh, is it? Yh I think so buh I do like ur push back at least u urged me to check my notes cuz I was worried 😂 abt inaccuracy so I owe u one but at least now u understand me like I understand you too ❤.

@Coco Sorry. I wasn’t saying that you used AI to make this, I was just trying to make a joke since it says that its an AI calculator and there’s a joke how using AI wastes water so I found it funny that a water calculator was going powered by AI.

@Gideonthegreat ooh alriii that’s fine thnx for clarifying

ofc, and great work you’re doing!

❤

oh lol np i just say what i know bc ik it helps others out :)