# The Generative AI Race Has a Dirty Secret

URL
: https://www.wired.com/story/the-generative-ai-search-race-has-a-dirty-secret/

[[ChatGPT]].

> The race to build high-performance, AI-powered search engines is likely to require a dramatic rise in computing power, and with it a massive increase in the amount of energy that tech companies require and the amount of carbon they emit.

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> While neither OpenAI nor Google, have said what the computing cost of their products is, third-party analysis by researchers estimates that the training of GPT-3, which ChatGPT is partly based on, consumed 1,287 MWh, and led to emissions of more than 550 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—the same amount as a single person taking 550 roundtrips between New York and San Francisco.

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> “We have to work on how to reduce the inference time required for such big models,” says Nafise Sadat Moosavi, a lecturer in natural language processing at the University of Sheffield, who works on sustainability in natural language processing. “Now is a good time to focus on the efficiency aspect.”

^ Or, you know.  Just avoid using them.