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.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    366·
    16 hours ago

    Bit of a clickbait. We can’t really say it without more info.

    But it’s important to point out that the lab’s test methodology is far from ideal.

    The team measured GPT-5’s power consumption by combining two key factors: how long the model took to respond to a given request, and the estimated average power draw of the hardware running it.

    What we do know is that the price went down. So this could be a strong indication the model is, in fact, more energy efficient. At least a stronger indicator than response time.

    • morrowind@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      13 hours ago

      That’s a terrible metric. By this providers that maximize hardware (and energy) use by having a queue of requests would be seen as having more energy use.