this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] yesman@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (11 children)

I think AI power usage has an upside. No amount of hype can pay the light bill.

AI is either going to be the most valuable tech in history, or it's going to be a giant pile of ash that used to be VC capital.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago (9 children)

It will not go away at this point. Too many daily users already, who uses it for study, work, chatting, looking things up.

If not OpenAI, it will be another service.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.ml 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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@lemmy.ml 1 points 46 minutes 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.

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