But the figures rely on hardware and usage assumptions that may be inaccurate.

The University of Rhode Island’s AI lab estimates that GPT-5 averages just over 18 Wh per query, so putting all of ChatGPT’s reported 2.5 billion requests a day through the model could see energy usage as high as 45 GWh.

A daily energy use of 45 GWh is enormous. A typical modern nuclear power plant produces between 1 and 1.6 GW of electricity per reactor per hour, so data centers running OpenAI’s GPT-5 at 18 Wh per query could require the power equivalent of two to three nuclear power reactors, an amount that could be enough to power a small country.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    17 hours ago

    Those users are not paying a sustainable price, they’re using chatbots because they’re kept artificially cheap to increase use rates.

    Force them to pay enough to make these bots profitable and I guarantee they’ll stop.

    • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      Or it will gate keep them from poor people. It will mean alot if the capabilities keep on improving.

      That being said, open source models will be a thing always, and I think with that in mind, it will not go away, unless it’s replaced with something better.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        I don’t think they can survive if they gatekeep and make it unaffordable to most people. There’s just not enough demand or revenue that can be generated from rich people asking for chatGPT to do their homework or pretend to be their friend. They need mass adoption to survive, which is why they’re trying to keep it artificially cheap in the first place.

        Why do you think they haven’t raised prices yet? They’re trying to make everyone use it and become reliant on it.

        And it’s not happening. The technology won’t “go away” per se, but these these expensive AI companies will fail.

        • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Well, if they succeed, it’s because of efficiency and lowering costs. Second is how much the data and control is really worth.

          The big companies is not just developing LLM’s, so they might justify it with other kinds of AI that actually makes them alot of money, either trough the market or government contracts.

          But who knows. This is a very new technology. If they actually make a functioning personal assitant so good, that it’s inconvinient not to have it, it might work.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            I can see government contracts making a lot of money regardless of how functional their technology actually is.

            It’s more about who you know than what you can actually do when it comes to getting money from the government.