Google Vice President Majd Bakar speaks on-stage during an annual conference in San Francisco with the back drop of a massive data center.“One query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes,” he says. “So, you can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.
But, starting in 2023, Google wrote in its sustainability report that it was no longer"maintaining operational carbon neutrality." The company says it's still pushing for its net-zero goal in 2030. “The infrastructure and electricity needed for these technologies create new challenges for meeting sustainability commitments across the tech sector,” the report reads.AI requires computer power from thousands of servers that are housed in data centers; and those data centers need massive amounts of electricity to meet that demand.