Sam Altman claims an average ChatGPT query uses ‘roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon’ of water

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, successful a blog station published Tuesday, says an mean ChatGPT query uses astir 0.000085 gallons of water, oregon “roughly 1 fifteenth of a teaspoon.” He made the assertion arsenic portion of a broader station connected his predictions astir however AI volition alteration the world. 

“People are often funny astir however overmuch vigor a ChatGPT query uses; the mean query uses astir 0.34 watt-hours, astir what an oven would usage successful a small implicit 1 second, oregon a high-efficiency lightbulb would usage successful a mates of minutes,” helium says. He besides argues that “the outgo of quality should yet converge to adjacent the outgo of electricity.” OpenAI didn’t instantly respond to a petition for remark connected however Altman came to those figures.

AI companies person travel nether scrutiny for vigor costs of their technology. This year, for example, researchers forecast that AI could devour much powerfulness than Bitcoin mining by the extremity of the year. In an nonfiction last year, The Washington Post worked with researchers to find that a 100-word email “generated by an AI chatbot utilizing GPT-4” required “a small much than 1 bottle.” The work besides recovered that h2o usage tin beryllium connected wherever a datacenter is located.