It's easy to slate AI in all its manifestations—trust me, I should know, I do so often enough—but some recent research from Epoch AI (via TechCrunch) suggests that we might be a little hasty if we're trashing its energy use (yes, that's the same Epoch AI that recently dropped a new, difficult math benchmark for AI). According to Epoch AI, ChatGPT likely consumes just 0.3 Wh of electricity, "10 times less" than the popular older estimate which claimed about 3 Wh.
Given a Google search amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy consumption per search, and based on the older 3 Wh estimate, two years ago Alphabet Chairman John Hennessey said that an LLM exchange would probably cost 10 times more than a Google search in energy. If Epoch AI's new estimate is correct, it seems that a likely GPT-4o interaction actually consumes the same amount of energy as a Google search.
