Sam Altman's claim that 38,000 ChatGPT requests consume as much water as producing one California almond has been questioned. The CEO of OpenAI own admitted that he was recalling the calculation from memory and the figure could be inaccurate.
a single global coefficient cannot replace the detailed disclosure of methodology and operational data for specific sites. Factors such as server cooling systems, facility location, and weather conditions significantly impact water consumption.
The actual computational work varies greatly depending on the prompt length, the volume of the response, and the complexity of the reasoning tasks. Local systems must also manage peak loads that increase during heatwaves, which further complicates any simplified average of requests.
