one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.
It’s not secret, people just don’t care. Manufacturers publish power and cooling data on spec sheets, but because people are easily wowed by pure garbage masquerading as breakthroughs and “future”, they simply ignore the costs and push ahead. Add in the fact that most “AI” startups are actual scams, and you’ve got a corporate incentive to pretend this isn’t doing permanent damage too.