Since we focused on GenAI\u2019s impact on the environment through water and power usage, I decided to seek new, third-party sources about how much water GenAI uses. According to this article<\/a>, a typical medium-length query to GPT-5 uses 39ml of water per response. It is worth noting that water usage estimate range from 0.26ml to 39ml, showcasing that different models have different water efficiencies and power-generation infrastructure.<\/p>\n For Comparison<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Does it matter that GenAI uses this much water?<\/strong><\/p>\n Frankly, I believe the answer to this question is no \u2013 not really. At least not according to the current data. However, whether or not you think GenAI uses too much water probably depends on how important you think GenAI is to humanity, and that is a discussion that we should continue to have.<\/p>\n With that being said, we could probably do better by reducing our reliance on coal, gas, and nuclear power plants to power AI data centres.<\/p>\n As can be seen in the above graphic by the Climate Reality Project<\/a>, we could greatly reduce the amount of water we need to produce power (that runs AI data centres) by transitioning to solar panels (or\/and wind energy). However, this should be done with the broader context in mind. This transition may be necessary for the future, but moving too speedily towards renewable energy is costly for both businesses and average citizens<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During week 5 of our EdTech class, we continued our discussion of GenAI. Whereas we mostly discussed its implications for learning last time, this time we discussed its consequences on the environment. How much water does GenAI use? Since we… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edtechuvic.ca\/edci336\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cjbasanta.opened.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9944\/2026\/02\/one-ai-query-may-not-use-much-water-but-it-adds-up-987x1024.png\")
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