Speaker 1: You Los Angeles continues to battle devastating wildfires. Over a week has passed, yet the inferno is still spreading. How did the fire start? are searching for answers, speculation is running wild, climate change, faulty power lines, deliberate arson, management, mismanagement of resources, anything and everything is being blamed. But one theory is gaining more traction than the rest. Chad GPT caused the wildfires. That's right, social media has a new scapegoat, Chad GPT, the same AI chatbot that can do maths and pen poems. Before we tell you why, let's quickly also look at the situation on the ground. 25 people have died, 6 million remain under a fire threat. Two fires are currently active, the Palisades and the Eaton fires. Firefighters are battling these blazes, but powerful winds make it very difficult. The conditions are expected to ease this weekend, but Los Angeles still has a long road to recovery, which brings us to the culprit. Social media users say Chad GPT caused the fires, But is that true? Is ChatGPT really responsible for the fires? And why is social media blaming artificial intelligence? To understand that, let's look at how ChatGPT works. Imagine you type a prompt into ChatGPT. The prompt is turned into code. This code flows through a network of servers. The servers run thousands of complex calculations, and ultimately, they produce the best possible response for you. Now, all of this happens on massive, power-hungry servers. These servers work hard, so they generate heat, lots of heat. And so data centers need to prevent overheating. For that, they rely on cooling systems. And this is where water plays a crucial role. Cooling towers use vast amounts of water just to keep servers at optimal temperatures. Essentially, ChatGPT is a water guzzler. To put it in perspective, a 100-word email needs around a bottle of water. Same for every four to five prompts. ChatGPT gulps almost 500 ml of water for this. Now let's zoom out and look at the larger picture. In 2024, ChatGPT had 300 million weekly active users. 300 million weekly active users, so you can imagine the amount of energy it consumed and the scale of water it needed. And that is why social media is complaining. Los Angeles is located in Southern California. This is a region that has experienced drought in the past, which means water is already scarce here. The wildfires exposed that scarcity and made it worse. The fires began on January 7th. Soon, fire hydrants were low on water. The L.A. fire department was panned and that's when social media started connecting the dots. Chad GPT relies on water, Los Angeles is running out of water, so naturally Chad GPT must be to blame. The fact is, this theory holds little water. The fire hydrants ran dry because of overwhelming demand. On top of that, the municipal water system is poorly designed. It cannot handle the demands of fast-moving wildfires. So this is not an AI problem. This is an infrastructure problem. But that does not let Chad GPT off the hook entirely. Yes, it is responsible for, not responsible rather, for this particular fire, but it is is very much part of a bigger problem. Our planet is heating up. Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common, like these wildfires in Los Angeles. Addressing this crisis needs collective action. You need to conserve natural resources like water. Instead, you're building more AI data centers that use gallons of water and electricity to write emails. So you can see where the problem is. The crisis in L.A. is a wake-up call. It's not just about the technologies we use today. It's about how we manage the infrastructure that supports this tech. A.I. companies will also have to do better. They must find other cooling alternatives or move data centers to cooler climates. After all, the future of A.I. does not just lie in the promise of intelligence. lies and how responsibly it can be integrated into our world. As for that email that you're delaying, you don't need Chad GPT to write it, you can type it out yourself. It will only take five more minutes of your time.

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