What’s the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT or Gemini?

Hannah Ritchie at Sustainability by Numbers:

  • My main conclusion is no different from my initial post: individual usage of ChatGPT and other LLMs for most people is a small part of their carbon and energy footprint.
  • The energy use “per query” is possibly 10 times lower than estimated in the previous article. Google estimates that its median text query uses around 33-times less energy than 12 months ago. So, this kind of stacks up.
  • Google says that its median text query uses around 0.24 Wh of electricity. That’s a tiny amount: equivalent to microwaving for one second, or running a fridge for 6 seconds.

More here.

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