OpenAI's AI Power Demands

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has indicated that future AI advancements could require a significant portion of the Earth's total power output. This projection highlights the increasing energy demands of complex AI models. Each task performed by OpenAI's o3 model consumes approximately 1,785 kilowatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to the energy usage of an average American household over two months, and produces carbon emissions comparable to burning five full tanks of gasoline.

To mitigate these energy demands, the industry is exploring solutions such as on-device AI processing, which can reduce energy consumption by 100 to 1,000 times compared to cloud-based AI. Governments are also responding with regulations, such as Singapore's restrictions on data centre capacity due to energy shortages. Experts suggest that energy breakthroughs are necessary to sustain future AI development, as AI-driven data centres already consume more electricity than entire countries.