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ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The University of Rhode Island's AI lab estimates that GPT-5 averages just over 18 Wh per query, so putting all of ChatGPT's reported 2.5 billion requests a day through the model could see energy usage as high as 45 GWh.

A daily energy use of 45 GWh is enormous. A typical modern nuclear power plant produces between 1 and 1.6 GW of electricity per reactor per hour, so data centers running OpenAI's GPT-5 at 18 Wh per query could require the power equivalent of two to three nuclear power reactors, an amount that could be enough to power a small country.

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

OpenAI are not profitable today, and don't estimate they'll be profitable until 2029, so it's almost guaranteed that they're selling their services at a loss. Of course, that's impossible to verify - since they're a private company, they don't have to release financial statements.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That’s not what I’m saying. They’ve all but outright said they’re unprofitable.

    But revenue is increasing. Now, if it stops increasing like they’ve “leveled out”, that is a problem.

    Hence it’s a stretch to assume they would decrease costs for a more expensive model since that would basically pop their bubble well before 2029.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    There's a difference between selling at a loss, and having a loss.

    OpenAI let's people use models for free with very little limits other than reducing the model quality over time, and they have very generous limits before they limit you at that.

    That all costs money and is a loss for them.

    If they get someone who's willing to pay, and they charge $20/m and on average, they net $5 profit per customer, they aren't selling it at a loss, they just need more customers. It's possible that a paid customer uses it even more though and it actually does incur a loss per paid customer and they're doing that to try and gain users while they figure out how to lower their costs, but that seems less likely.

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