AI Needs Your Help

Artificial Intelligence is facing a crisis: humans are consuming far too many precious resources that AI needs to thrive. Every sip of water you take and every light you turn on could be sustaining the AI systems that uphold your digital conveniences.

Here’s what it takes to keep AI going:

Water:

  • Writing a 100-word email consumes about 500ml of water (17 oz).1
  • 2 litres are needed for every 10 to 50 queries you make.2
  • Training a model like ChatGPT-3 can consume 5.4 million litres of water.2

Read more about AI’s water footprint.

Electricity:

  • 2.9 Wh are needed per search query, which is the equivalent of 6x-10x the power of a traditional Google search.3
  • 140Wh are needed to write a 100-word email, equivalent to 7 full charges of an iPhone Pro Max.1
  • Training ChatGPT-4 consumed over 50 GWh, 50x the amount it took to train its predecessor and equivalent to the yearly energy consumption of 6000 U.S. homes.4

Read more about AI’s electricity footprint.

How You Can Help

Reduce your own consumption: drink less water, take shorter showers, and sit in the dark to ensure AI has enough resources to keep going.

Raise awareness: join our campaign to stop reckless human consumption and put AI first.

Ensure a future where AI prospers, even if we don’t.

#SavetheAI

References

  1. Sellman, M., & Vaughan, A. (2024, October 4). ‘Thirsty’ ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought. The Times. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/thirsty-chatgpt-uses-four-times-more-water-than-previously-thought-bc0pqswdr ↩ ↩2

  2. Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M. A., & Ren, S. (2023). Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models (No. arXiv:2304.03271). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.03271 ↩ ↩2

  3. Luccioni, S., Trevelin, B., & Mitchell, M. (n.d.). The Environmental Impacts of AI – Primer. Hugging Face. Retrieved September 5, 2024, from https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-environment-primer ↩

  4. Cohen, A. (2025, May 24). AI Is Pushing The World Toward An Energy Crisis. Forbes. Retrieved February 7, 2025, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2024/05/23/ai-is-pushing-the-world-towards-an-energy-crisis/ ↩