Everything you need to know about estimating AI's energy and emissions burden

Despite the fact that billions of dollars are being poured into reshaping energy infrastructure around the needs of AI, no one has settled on a way to quantify AI's energy usage. Worse, companies are generally unwilling to disclose their own piece of the puzzle. There are also limitations to estimating the emissions associated with that energy demand, because the grid hosts a complicated, ever-changing mix of energy sources. So, that said, here are the many variables, assumptions, and caveats that we used to calculate the consequences of an AI query. Companies like OpenAI, dealing in "closed-source" models, generally offer access to their systems through an interface where you input a question and receive an answer.