Can you source that? A lot of places have gravity fed reservoirs that are energy positive/neutral (LA, San Francisco and New York all rely on gravity fed reservoirs that were built before energy intensive pumping was practical). There are some costs but they are pretty small per gallon.
I’m assuming that calculation is amortizing the cost of running the water system (including wastewater treatment) adding the cost pumping it to the point that gravity can push it through the pipes. It’s never free.
There seems to be a vast gap between "free" and "more expensive than running LLMs". Also, the water seems...more necessary. Going without LLMs for three days will not threaten your life.
we should shut off clean water and shunt the energy toward more text generation
The utility of having clean water is arguably higher than that of being able to create a steampunk-style of a cat in a suit.
I'm pretty sure this is false. Here's my reasoning.
A google search claims water use uses 12.7% of US energy.
Another search gave 11.7% US energy goes to powering AI (projected to increase to roughly 25% by 2030).
Taking into account hydropower power provides 6.2% of US energy, I feel comfortable saying your statement isn't true.
To further strengthen my statement, I would like to point out another statistic. NPR gives us an estimate of 300K gallons of water use/day to cool the average data center. That pretty much guarantees an LLM query produces more carbon than my filling a cup from a gravity fed water system filled by rain.
Or, even worse God forbid, think about how much carbon is produced to create a single bottle or carton of water. Then consider how casually people down bottles of water.