The Hidden Cost of Intelligent Machines
Artificial intelligence may be an invisible force in our daily lives, but it has a very real physical footprint. Every ChatGPT query, image generation, or algorithmic recommendation is powered by electricity-hungry data centers. And as AI adoption explodes, so does its demand for energy – raising urgent questions about whether our climate goals can withstand this new digital drain on the power grid.
Consider this: training a single state-of-the-art AI model can consume astonishing amounts of electricity. OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, for example, required an estimated 42.4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity for its training – roughly equivalent to the daily electricity use of 28,500 U.S.
