Keith McNulty’s Post

View profile for Keith McNulty, graphic
Keith McNulty Keith McNulty is an Influencer

Leader in Technology and Analytics @ McKinsey | Mathematician, Statistician and Psychometrician | Digital and Analytics Leader | Author and Teacher | Coder, Engineer, Architect

This piece of research looks at the impact of AI on global water withdrawal, caused by the evaporation of water used to cool AI-related data center activity. Two interesting conclusions: 1. It estimates that 700,000 liters of water was evaporated in training GPT-3. 2. It extrapolates that global AI demand in 2027 may lead to 4.4-6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal, which is half the current water withdrawal of the United Kingdom. Link to full paper --> https://lnkd.in/gWCMUfF6 #ai #machinelearning #analytics #datascience #sustainability #peopleanalytics #python #rstats

  • No alternative text description for this image

Now imagine you could use a good part of that warm water as either heating (think home hearing, defrosting sidewalks, warm pools, ...), or simply for power generation. One key point missing is people tend to focus on one thing (eg computing power), rather than on what could be recovered (and reused).

Ed Powers

Customer Success leader and consultant

1mo

Compare this to the human brain, which is far more impressive than any supercomputer or AI. The human body consumes about 100W and 2.7-3.7L of water a day.

So it's going to start raining more?

Dylan Anderson

Bridging the gap between data and strategy ✦ Lead Data Strategy Consultant @ Redkite ✦ Author of The Data Ecosystem newsletter ✦ R Programmer ✦ Policy Nerd

1mo

Damn, there definitely needs to be a better environmental approach to both powering AI and retaining water

Maarten van der Heijden

Data Architect at Tata Steel BV, designer of data constructs.

1mo

Now I understand why this May was the rainiest May ever in NL.

Like
Reply
Fabion Kauker

Broadband Data | Software Development | Consulting

1mo

Wow very interesting! This is another data layer that can be added to the model https://pozibl.com/work/data-center-site-selection/ Would love to get your view on this Keith McNulty

Can they use recycled water?

Like
Reply
See more comments

To view or add a comment, sign in

Explore topics