L069 · What's next · 3 min
AI's electricity and water
One AI answer uses a small amount of energy, but billions of answers, plus training, add up to a real load on power grids and water.
01 · The idea
AI runs on chips called GPUs in large data centers. They draw a lot of electricity, and the heat they make is often removed with cooling systems that use water.
Training a big model is a one-time job that can use as much electricity as many homes use in a year. Answering questions, called inference, uses far less each time, but it happens billions of times a day.
Estimates for a single chatbot reply vary widely, because they depend on the model, the length of the answer, the hardware and the data center. Most put a typical text reply in the range of a few seconds to a few minutes of running a light bulb. Images, video and long reasoning cost more.
Companies are building more efficient chips and cooling, and some use cleaner power. You can help a little too: pick a fast model for easy jobs, skip needless regenerations, and do not make videos just to throw them away.
02 · Think of it like this
It is like one cup of tea versus a whole city's tea. A single cup barely shows on the bill. Millions of cups every hour need a power station.
03 · Do it now
04 · Quick check
Words in this lesson
See also
L044Under the hood · 2 min
Training vs inference: learning once, answering millions of times
Training is when a model learns, and it happens before you ever use it; inference is the model answering you, using what it already learned.
L002How AI thinks · 2 min
How machines learn
A machine learns by guessing, checking how wrong it was, and adjusting itself a tiny bit, billions of times.
L168Under the hood · 2 min
Where AI apps live: cloud or your device
Some AI runs in big data centres far away and some runs on your own phone or laptop, and that choice affects speed, privacy, cost and quality.
L184Under the hood · 3 min
The cost of each AI question
Every question sent to a paid AI model has a small cost, set mostly by how much text goes in and comes out, and those small costs add up fast.