HOW MUCH WATER DOES CHATGPT CONSUME?

Al requires energy and water. While firms are working on reducing their carbon footprint, users too need to be discerning in how they use Al

- Nitin Sreedhar

You sit in front of your computer and start posing questions to ChatGPT-a large language model-based AI (Artificial Intelligence) Y chatbot developed by OpenAI-about a work project. By the time you get your answers, and some solutions, your prompts and questions may have used more energy than a Google search query.

A few months ago, the Reddit group r/aipromptprogramming posed an interesting question to ChatGPT: How much energy does a single GPT query consume? The estimated energy consumption of a Google search query is 0.0003 kWh (1.08 kJ). The estimated energy consumption of a ChatGPT-4 query is 0.001-0.01 kWh (3.6-36 kJ), depending on the model size and number of tokens processed.

That means a single GPT query consumes 1,567%, or 15 times more energy than a Google search query. To put it in context, a 60W incandescent light bulb consumes 0.06kWh in an hour.

The research backs it: Al's energy footprint is growing as more people use it, raising questions about its environmental impact.

The last two years have seen extensive AI adoption. OpenAI's conversational ChatGPT chatbot set the ball rolling; now Google (Alphabet) and Microsoft have their own versions of chatbots, Bard and Bing Chat, respectively. According to a Reuters report, ChatGPT alone had more than 100 million monthly active users at the beginning of 2023. From creating AI-generated images of the "Balenciaga Pope" to Indianising tech billionaires, digital artists are using tools like Midjourney to push the boundaries of their imagination every day.

In a recent paper in the journal Joule, which looks at research, analysis and ideas on more sustainable energy, Alex de Vries, a PhD candidate at the VU Amsterdam School of Business and Economics, Netherlands, and the founder of Digiconomist, a research company, said that in a few years, powering AI could use as much electricity as a small country.