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Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, has disclosed that a single ChatGPT query consumes about 0.34 watt-hours of electricity and 0.000085 gallons of water.
He disclosed this in an official X post to address the common question regarding the environmental cost of using AI-powered tools like ChatGPT.
“The average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one-fifteenth of a teaspoon,” he said.
Altman disclosed that the power required per query is minimal, equivalent to a lightbulb running for a couple of minutes and uses just a fraction of a teaspoon of water, while adding that as data centre operations become increasingly automated, the cost of intelligence will likely decrease over time.
“The cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity,” he said.
Altman addressed the broader implications of rapid technological advancements. While acknowledging the very hard parts of the transition, such as the elimination of entire job categories, he maintained that the pace of wealth creation and policy innovation could create space for new ideas that were previously unthinkable.
“There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand, the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before.”
He also noted that although societies may not embrace a new social contract all at once, over time, the gradual changes will be transformative. Humans still hold a fundamental edge over machines, our intrinsic need to care about one another.
“People have a long-term important and curious advantage over AI: we are hard-wired to care about other people and what they think and do, and we don’t care very much about machines.”
He predicted that people would adapt to AI by developing new wants, discovering new purposes, and getting access to better tools and products. “Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we’ll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other.
“People have a long-term important and curious advantage over AI: we are hard-wired to care about other people and what they think and do, and we don’t care very much about machines.”
