ChatGPT's hidden water costs revealed

Welcome back to The Daily Update — Here’s what’s kicking off another week in AI:

🗞️ The Latest: Meta is working on a new AI model to rival GPT-4

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Web scraping with AiScraper

📸 Industry Spotlight: How the AI technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

Read time: 2 minutes

🗞️ The Latest: Meta is working on a new AI model to rival GPT-4

Meta plans to start training a new large language model as powerful as GPT-4 by early 2024. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is once again pushing for the model to be free for companies to create new AI tools.

What you need to know:

• Meta has been buying more Nvidia H100 AI-training chips and building out data centers in preparation for the highly-sophisticated model.

• The company previously relied on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to train AI models.

• Meta reportedly hopes to create AI tools that can emulate human expressions.

• AI research turnover has been markedly higher at Meta than other leading AI companies, yet it continues to crank out new models and features for social apps.

The bottom line: New models are almost always a good thing for the advancement of AI technology. If Meta manages to create a free alternative to GPT-4 we could see an onslaught of top-of-the-line LLMs.

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Web scraping with AiScraper

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📸 Industry Spotlight: How the AI technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa

Developing advanced AI like ChatGPT requires immense computing power, but a new report by the Associated Press reveals the hidden cost of water to cool powerful supercomputers.

Key points:

• Microsoft's global water consumption increased by 34% from 2021 to 2022 due to rising AI demands.

• Google reported a 20% rise in water usage in the same time period.

• Microsoft-backed OpenAI pulls water from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to power ChatGPT.

• Researchers at the University of California say that five ChatGPT queries use the equivalent of a 16-ounce bottle of water.

• The researchers are trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products like ChatGPT.

• Big tech companies responded by acknowledging the water-intensive nature of AI training while highlighting advancements in renewable energy, efficiency and sustainability efforts.

Why it matters: The growth of AI technology comes at a heavy cost to the environment. Transparency between big tech and the public will be key to the continuation of fast-moving innovation. Environmental concerns could additionally factor into the growing push for AI regulation.

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

• AI Crackdown: IRS will use AI to uncover potential tax violations by wealthy individuals and large partnerships.

• Transparent AI: Amazon will require self-publishers to disclose the use of AI-generated text and images.

• AI Shopping: eBay rolls out a new AI tool that generates product listings from photos.

• AI Overseas: Nvidia partners with Reliance and Tata to bring AI tech and skills to India.

Have questions or thoughts on today’s newsletter? Reply to this email and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for reading The Daily Update!

Jack

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