Recently, the use of ChatGPT has skyrocketed. While ChatGPT is useful and educates people about various topics every day, it actually has an extremely harmful effect on the environment, more than other search engines. ChatGPT’s hidden environmental costs are often ignored, and it is important that we recognize them before the use of this AI tool advances even more.

While it is true that ChatGPT promotes creativity, its use requires massive amounts of energy for just a simple prompt or question. Every generated paragraph runs on vast amounts of electricity, which requires tons of water to stay cool and not overheat. These data centers are filled with thousands of computers that produce the prompts requested by users. When these computers are constantly active, they expel a lot of heat, making it necessary for something to cool them down: water. As the demand for ChatGPT prompts escalates, immense amounts of water are being wasted. Studies show that ChatGPT specifically uses the most energy compared to other search engines, and it is important to spread awareness of the negative effects of this increasingly popular tool.

Here are a few simple ways to reduce energy and water waste from ChatGPT:

• Decipher whether using AI is really necessary for the task before generating.
• Support search engines/tech companies that use renewable energy to power their servers.
• Delete the ChatGPT app off your device.

By Sadie Bretts