Jay Peters is a news editor who covers technology, gaming and more. He joined The Verge after almost two years working at Techmeme.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said in a blog posted Tuesdaythat an average ChatGPT request uses 0.000085 gallons or “roughly a fifteenth of a tablespoon.” This was part of a larger post about his predictions on how AI will transform the world.
He says that people are curious about the amount of energy used by a ChatGPT request. The average query consumes 0.34 watt hours, which is about what a high efficiency lightbulb or an oven would consume in just over a second. Altman also says that “the cost for intelligence should eventually be near the cost for electricity”. OpenAI did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how Altman arrived at these figures.
The energy costs of AI technology have been a subject of scrutiny. Researchers have predicted that AI will consume more energy than Bitcoin mining this year. In an article published last year,The Washington Post and researchers determined that a 100 word email “generated by a AI chatbot using GPT-4” required “a little bit more than one bottle”.
