OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, has disclosed that a single ChatGPT query consumes about 0.34 watt-hours of electricity and 0.000085 gallons of water.
This disclosure was made to address a common question from the public regarding the environmental cost of using AI-powered tools like ChatGPT.
Altman made the disclosure on Monday in an official post on X.
Altman disclosed that the power required per query is minimal, equivalent to a lightbulb running for a couple of minutes, and uses just a fraction of a teaspoon of water.
“The average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one-fifteenth of a teaspoon,” he said.
Altman added that as data center operations become increasingly automated, the cost of intelligence will likely decrease over time
“The cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity,” he noted.
AI disruption
Altman addressed the broader implications of rapid technological advancements. While acknowledging the very hard parts of the transition, such as the elimination of entire job categories, he maintained that the pace of wealth creation and policy innovation could create space for new ideas that were previously unthinkable.
“There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand, the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before,” he wrote.
He also noted that although societies may not embrace a new social contract all at once, over time, the gradual changes will be transformative.
“We probably won’t adopt a new social contract all at once, but when we look back in a few decades, the gradual changes will have amounted to something big,” he said
Human empathy advantage over machines
Altman noted that humans still hold a fundamental edge over machines our intrinsic need to care about one another.
“People have a long-term important and curious advantage over AI: we are hard-wired to care about other people and what they think and do, and we don’t care very much about machines,” he said
He predicted that people would adapt to AI by developing new wants, discovering new purposes, and getting access to better tools and products.
“If history is any guide, we will figure out new things to do and new things to want, and assimilate new tools quickly (job change after the industrial revolution is a good recent example). Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we’ll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other. People have a long-term important and curious advantage over AI: we are hard-wired to care about other people and what they think and do, and we don’t care very much about machines,” he said
What you should know
Nairametrics reported that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was the most downloaded non-gaming app globally in March 2025, overtaking Instagram and TikTok for the first time.
- The app recorded 46 million new downloads in March, representing a 28% increase from February and marking its best monthly performance to date. This is the first time the AI chatbot app has secured the top spot in monthly global app downloads.
- While ChatGPT took the lead, Meta’s family of apps maintained a strong presence in the top charts. Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp remained in the global top five, with other Meta apps like Threads and CapCut also ranking in the top 10.
The company also revealed that its weekly active users surpassed 400 million in February 2025, up from 300 million in December 2024.
