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Brittany Trang, Ph.D., is a health tech reporter at STAT and writes the AI Prognosis newsletter. Follow her on Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. You can reach Brittany on Signal at btrang.01.

You’re reading the web edition of STAT’s AI Prognosis newsletter, our subscriber-exclusive guide to artificial intelligence in health care and medicine. Sign up to get it delivered in your inbox every Wednesday. 

As you’ll see, AI Prognosis looks a little different today because I’ve been busy attending and traveling to/from the National Association of Science Writers’ conference in Chicago. Keep reading for some fun AI-related things I learned there.

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As always: Email tips, questions, story ideas to [email protected], or contact me on Signal at btrang.01 for sensitive story tips.

How much water does AI really use?

A conference session I attended this weekend addressed the climate and health effects of data centers. What caught my attention was an explanation of why Google says that its AI uses only 0.26 mL of water (or five drops) per prompt, whereas French AI company Mistral says its AI model uses 45 mL. 

Shaolei Ren, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, broke down electricity/water usage at data centers into three parts: 

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