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 month 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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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 116 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (9 children)

I have an extreme dislike for OpenAI, Altman, and people like him, but the reasoning behind this article is just stuff some guy has pulled from his backside. There's no facts here, it's just "I believe XYX" with nothing to back it up.

We don't need to make up nonsense about the LLM bubble. There's plenty of valid enough criticisms as is.

By circulating a dumb figure like this, all you're doing is granting OpenAI the power to come out and say "actually, it only uses X amount of power. We're so great!", where X is a figure that on its own would seem bad, but compared to this inflated figure sounds great. Don't hand these shitty companies a marketing win.

[–] gil2455526@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I saw some people speculating GPT-5 is having worse performance in some tasks than older models but still being forced to everyone because it's a consolidation and cost cutting version, but how could it be cutting costs if it consumes 8 times more power?

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