>We used the figure of 0.34 watt-hours that OpenAI’s Sam Altman stated in a blog post without supporting evidence. It’s worth noting that some researchers say the smartest models can consume over 20 Wh for a complex query. We derived the number of queries per day from OpenAI's usage statistics below.

I honestly have no clue how much trust to place in data from a blog post written by a guy trying to make people give him lots of money. My gut is to question every word that comes out of his mouth but I'm maybe pessimistic in that regard.

But besides that, the cost of this stuff isn't just the energy consumption of the computation itself; the equipment needs to be manufactured, raw materials need to be extracted and processed, supplies and manpower need to be shuffled around. Construction of associated infrastructure has it's own costs as well. what are we, as a society (as opposed to shareholders and executives) going to get in return and is it going to be enough to justify the costs, not just in terms of cash but also resources. To say nothing of the potential environmental impact of all this.