In recent years, ChatGPT has exploded in popularity, with nearly 200 million users pumping a total of over a billion prompts into the app every day. These prompts may seem to complete requests out of thin air.
But behind the scenes, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are using a massive amount of energy. In 2023, data centers, which are used to train and process AI, were responsible for 4.4 percent of electricity use in the United States. Across the world, these centers make up around 1.5 percent of global energy consumption. These numbers are expected to skyrocket, at least doubling by 2030 as the demand for AI grows.
"Just three years ago, we didn't even have ChatGPT yet," said Alex de Vries-Gao, an emerging technology sustainability researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and founder of Digiconomist, a platform dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends. "And now we're talking about a technology that's going to be responsible for almost half of the electricity consumption by data centers globally."
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