and that’s even before we factor in the water cost.
Next time you use AI maybe be less polite. Thank you and please are important. OpenAI is wasting tens of thousands of dollars on energy
Each word you type into an AI bot needs to be processed and added up by a computer. At the scale of OpenAI this appears to have amounted to a lot. There are also concerns about the amount of water AI chatbots consume. Some estimates suggest that 500 millilitres per 5-50 prompts is used, depending on how complex and large your question is.
You never know.
– Sam Altman (@sama), April 16, 2025.
Although this is a large amount and will likely get worse as more players enter AI chatbot markets, it’s certainly not the first time that we’ve been concerned about the environment around new technology. I remember in elementary school being told that my Google search would use enough energy to boil a pot. It appears that this was overblown. A single Google search only uses around 0.0003kWhwhich is enough energy to run a lightbulb around 17 seconds.
At Google’s scale this is more energy than ChatGPT reportedly uses, but compared to 2.9Wh an average ChatGPT search might pull, the AI company will pass Google in terms of energy usage very quickly.
There is a way to avoid the water usage. For example, building AI data centres at cold locations like Telus did. This uses natural temperatures instead of water cooling to keep computers that run the software from becoming too hot.
Sam AltmanRW Digital
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