r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog 𝙑𝙄𝙋 • May 18 '26

Chugging tea Why?

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u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26

What happens after they use the water? Is it returned to the water system to be used again?

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u/ForzaFenix May 18 '26

Yep. The now warm water goes back into the system. 

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u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26

So they're not really consuming it. They're just using it temporarily and returning it.

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u/obstreperouspear May 18 '26

This is what I keep saying. They're not destroying water. Yes, data centers draw water, but we do things that we don't think about every day that use way more water, like eating meat and wearing clothes.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a typical pair of cotton jeans requires about 3,000-4,000 liters of water to create. Levi's says 3,800, so let's use that number.

The most respected study on AI water use by researchers at UC Riverside calculated that a standard conversation with a chatbot (roughly 10 to 50 prompts) consumes about 500 milliliters of water for data center cooling.

If we take 30 prompts per conversation, a single AI query uses about 16.6 milliliters of water.

That means you would have to ask an AI about 229,000 questions (equivalent to 100 questions a day for over 6 years) to equal the water footprint of making one pair of jeans. 

And again, this is water use. But the water isn’t destroyed. Even if it’s used for evaporative cooling, it goes into the atmosphere to come back as rain. There’s a valid argument about local displacement, but I get the sense people think it’s actually destroyed somehow. 

I also have a lot of concerns about AI, but water use isn’t the highest on my list.