I Drank a Bottle of Water Just Talking to the Internet (possibly)

(A Haphazard Athlete investigation)

Right. So this all started the way most of my problems do…

Googling. ( well and another office discussion)

Not about running.

Not about training.

Not even about whether I should’ve had that second packet of crisps (I should, obviously).

No, I asked:

“Does AI use water?”

And the answer, annoyingly, was:

Yes. Yes it does.

Wait… what?

Turns out every time I fire off a question, whether it’s about:

dodgy van electrics
a half-baked OU assignment
or why my legs feel like overcooked spaghetti at Parkrun

…it’s being processed in some massive data centre somewhere.

And those places get hot.

Very hot.

So they use cooling systems.

And a lot of those systems use water.

So how much water have I used

This is where it gets a bit silly.

Some boffins worked out that:

one AI interaction ≈ half a millilitre of water

Half a millilitre.

That’s basically… a suspiciously small droplet.

But.

Because I basically treat AI/Google like a 24/7 life coach / therapist / mechanic / running buddy…

Let’s say I’ve fired off:

20–50 prompts a day
for a full month

That gives us:

👉 0.3 to 0.75 litres of water

Which means…

Over the last month…

I’ve basically wasted a bottle of water by accident.

Not even a big one.

Not even one of those gym ones with inspirational nonsense written down the side.

Just… a normal bottle.

Perspective check (before we all panic)

Now before we all start running guilt intervals around the block:

A single cup of coffee → ~140 litres
A burger → ~2,000+ litres (another reason to be vegitarian)
A shower → 50–100 litres

And me?

👉 A month of asking daft questions = less than one drink

🤔 So what’s the actual issue?

Here’s the serious bit (don’t worry, it won’t last long):

It’s not really about you or me. ( Me and You, sorry thats for our older viewers)

It’s about:

millions of people
billions of queries
and massive Data Centres running constantly

That’s where the water use adds up.

Haphazard conclusion

So where does this leave us?

Well:

I’m still going to ask stupid questions
I’m still going to overthink my running pace
and I’m definitely still going to Google things I could just ignore

But now I know…

👉 every question costs about a droplet

👉 every month costs about a bottle

👉 and somehow, that’s the least chaotic part of my training plan

Plot twist: not all that water is “gone”

Here’s where it gets slightly less doom-and-gloom.

Some data centres don’t just chuck water into the void.
They use something called closed-loop cooling systems.

Which is basically:
👉 the same water going round… and round… and round again

Like that one runner on Strava who just does laps of the same park.

In these systems:

Water absorbs heat from servers
Gets cooled down (often without being lost)
Then goes straight back in to do the job again

So instead of constantly using fresh water, they’re recycling it internally.

…but not always

Other systems (especially older or cheaper ones) use evaporative cooling.

That’s the one where:
👉 water turns into vapour and disappears into the air

Which means:

it leaves the system
can’t be reused on-site
and has to be replaced

So depending on the setup, AI is either:

reusing water like a sensible adult
or misting it into the sky like a fancy garden feature

What it means

Water on Earth doesn’t disappear, it just moves around in a loop: ( see I told you that Open University course wasnt a waste of time)

Evaporation
Water turns into vapour (like in those data centres)
Condensation
Vapour forms clouds
Precipitation
Falls back down as rain
Collection
Ends up in rivers, lakes, oceans… and gets reused again

so back to AI

So when water in a data centre:

evaporates into the air ☁️
it’s not “gone forever”

👉 it’s just left the building and rejoined the global water cycle

🏃‍♂️ Haphazard translation

You didn’t “use up” water…

👉 You just borrowed it from the planet for a bit

The important Eco bit

Even though water stays in the cycle:

It’s not always in the right place
It’s not always clean or usable
And it might take a long time to come back as rain somewhere useful

That’s why people still worry about water use

Water never disappears, it just moves… sometimes inconveniently far away.

Final thought

I’ve spent years trying to stay hydrated…

Turns out, somewhere out there,
a data centre is doing the same thing
just (sometimes) slightly more efficiently.

Stay Haphazard. 💥