THE ChatGPT uses about the same amount of water as a bottle of water to generate a single 100-word email, and consumes 0.14 kWh, the equivalent of what is needed to keep 14 LED bulbs on for an hour. .
The data was obtained from a study published by the Washington Post in partnership with researchers from the University of California, which attempted to quantify the water and electricity consumed by these chatbots that work with artificial intelligence, although it is difficult to obtain exact results. The study was carried out using the GPT-4 language model, released by OpenAI in March 2023, and the costs were calculated based on what a typical data center located in the United States would spend.
AI chatbots consume a huge amount of energy just to answer user questions, and a huge amount of water to keep their servers cool enough to keep running.
Each command entered in the chat requires thousands of calculations to decide the best words to give in response. As the calculations are performed, the servers — which are usually located in data centers, rooms that store computing equipment — begin to heat up, usually with water systems being used for cooling.
According to the survey, to generate a 100 word email a chatbot using the GPT-4 model uses 519 ml of water. If used for this purpose once a week throughout the year, the amount reaches 27 liters of water.
The same 100-word email uses 0.14 kWh of electricity, equivalent to the amount needed to keep 14 LED bulbs on for one hour. If used for this purpose once a week for a year, it amounts to 7.5 kWh, equivalent to the electricity consumed by nine homes for one hour.
The study can be checked on the Arxiv preprint platform.
This content was originally published in ChatGPT uses a bottle of water for every 100 words generated, says research on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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