Thirst for Profit

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  Landing Page

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  Tycoon

Inspiration:

The new wave of hackathons has seen exciting advancements in GenAI. But with its growing presence comes a lesser-known cost: water. Training large models like GPT-3 can consume billions of gallons of clean water, often without user awareness, to keep data centres cool.

We wanted to build something that brings attention to this hidden cost through a fun and thought-provoking medium.

While brainstorming, we noticed that many fellow hackers used GenAI to kickstart their hack. This inspired us to create a simulation that gamifies the environmental toll of AI in an engaging yet impactful way.

What it does:

• Thirst for Profit is a social awareness strategy game where players run their own AI companies, balancing profits against a finite shared resource: Global Water.
• Players mine minerals, train models, generate energy, and upgrade infrastructure to earn profits.
• However, every action depletes water, a shared global resource available to all players.
• As an AI company's profits rise, water levels fall.
• If the reservoir runs out, everyone loses!
• The game uses real-world estimates of AI’s water consumption to simulate a collective race against depletion.

How we built it:

We built the frontend using Next.js and p5.js for interactive pixel visuals. The backend is powered by Flask, with MongoDB for storing game data and Auth0 for secure user authentication.

Challenges we ran into:

• Balancing gameplay with real-world data realism was tough. We wanted to be informative without killing the fun.
• Designing an intuitive UI with 4 functional tycoons was complex in layout and responsiveness. -Integrating auth0 for the first time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We're proud of implementing our figma designs on our frontend and using our unique skills to collaborate together. We learned many new technologies, like implementing Auth0 and integrating with mongodb on a flask powered back end.

What we learned:

• The real impact of AI infrastructure goes far beyond carbon footprints. It deeply affects local freshwater ecosystems.
• How to take a difficult topic and make it engaging through game design.
• Implementing global state logic across a multiplayer-like simulation.

What's next for Thirst for Profit:

• Adding real-time multiplayer: all players share the same water reservoir in real time.
• More global events affecting profits: tech breakthroughs, green energy subsidies, geopolitics.
• Integrating live data APIs to reflect real AI company usage and water statistics.

Built With

• auth0
• figma
• flask
• framer-motion
• mongodb
• next.js
• p5.js
• python
• tailwindcss
• typescript