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Your ChatGpt Usage is killing our planet but there are ways to help.
Did you know that ChatGpt prompts consume enough electricity daily to power the Empire State Building for a year and a half as well as consuming almost a million bath-fulls of water every day? I mean you probably didn't but ChatGpt presently uses around 39.98 Million kWh per day. That is enough to charge eight million phones. Each year, the 117 lowest-consumption countries each consume less electricity than ChatGpt. So...
How much electricity do ChatGpt prompts consume?
Lets get down to the numbers.
A single ChatGpt prompt runs thousands of calculations. This intern uses a lot of energy and water. Studies show that the GPT-4 model consumes 0.14 kW and 519 ml of water each time it generates 100 words. Keep in mind the average content generational response is around 500-800 words AND there are 400 million active weekly users which use the chatbot up to five times per day.
Daily ChatGpt Usage:
In one day ChatGpt uses an estimated 39.98 million KWH of energy. In comparison that could charge eight million phones.
Close to 39.1 million gallons of water. That is enough water to fill 978,00 bath tubs or to flush the toilet 24 millions times. (That is the equivalent of the entire population of Taiwan flushing their toilet at the same time.
Weekly ChatGpt Usage:
In one week ChatGpt uses a whopping 279.86 million KWH of energy. That is almost FOUR TIMES the electricity used for the entirety of Super Bowl Sunday. That includes powering the stadiums, Superbowl related travel and household TV's.
Around 274.12 million gallons of water. That is enough to fill over 864 million Stanley Quencher cups and more water than Disneyland Orlando used in a fortnight.
Monthly ChatGpt Usage:
In one month ChatGpt uses (We're getting to big numbers now) 1.199 BILLION KWH of energy each month. That is more than what the whole country of Barbados uses in the same time span. This is also enough to power all the build boards in Times Square for more than 20 years
(Hold onto your shocks) 1.174 BILLION gallons of water. That is enough water to fill 1,780 Olympic-sized swimming pools or enough to give every person on earth two glasses of water.
Annual ChatGpt Usage:
In one year ChatGpt uses (Holy Cow) 14.46 BILLION KWH of energy! That is more electricity than 117 countries consume in a year!
(How is this allowed?!) 14.28 BILLION gallons of water! That is close to the amount of ground water Barbados uses in a year or enough to fill the Central Park Reservoir fourteen times.
Lets stop and think...
Why would you ever want to use ChatGpt after reading this. Yes, it may be cheap. Yes, it may be fast. But you know what? All this makes us lazy. It makes us lose things that separates us from machines. Our passion, our creativity and our perseverance.
One Google search uses less than 1 milliliter per query. Why on earth would you use ChatGpt like a search bar. You are burning our planet by doing that. Writing that homework due tomorrow? Guess what, not only are you wasting resources you're also wasting your time since you're making a machine do all the work and you aren't retaining any knowledge.
One thing that has always annoys me is when someone says "Oh well I'm just one person and millions of other people are using it." What do you think those other 400 million people are saying?!
Yes your actions directly impact you. Complaining about how hot it is outside after participating in the newest AI photo trend or why we go from having days of torrential rain and flash flooding to weeks of drought? AI is rapidly affecting climate change in ways you couldn't imagine. So when you say "Oh that doesn't affect me." Oh yes it does.
And to think, there are eco-friendly alternatives that do the same job if not better!
Here are some of my go to alternatives and other eco apps:
Viro AI - Eco-friendly powered by clean energy
INaturalist - Upload and identify organisms while helping contribute to science.
GreenPt (PAY TO USE) - Running on renewable energy while having strict data protection. Trusted by several European governments.
Ecosia - The green Google alternative that tracks and focuses on using 100% of their revenue to help with climate action. 248,795,701 trees have been planted by Ecosia and €100,111,327 has been dedicated to climate action.