A single ChatGPT query uses as much energy as a Google search did in 2009

In a romanticized essay on the supposedly imminent singularity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentions an interesting fact about ChatGPT’s energy consumption: a single ChatGPT request consumes an average of 0.34 watt-hours of power and 0.000085 gallons of water. That energy usage is roughly on par with what a Google search consumed back in 2009, but Altman excludes the fact that ChatGPT is likely handling far more requests per person. And with new AI models like multimodal systems, agents, and advanced reasoning engines demanding even more compute, the rapid expansion of data centers suggests the overall energy appetite of these systems is only increasing.