- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
The University of Rhode Island’s AI lab estimates that GPT-5 averages just over 18 Wh per query, so putting all of ChatGPT’s reported 2.5 billion requests a day through the model could see energy usage as high as 45 GWh.
A daily energy use of 45 GWh is enormous. A typical modern nuclear power plant produces between 1 and 1.6 GW of electricity per reactor per hour, so data centers running OpenAI’s GPT-5 at 18 Wh per query could require the power equivalent of two to three nuclear power reactors, an amount that could be enough to power a small country.
I don’t buy the research paper at all. Of course we have no idea what OpenAI does because they aren’t open at all, but Deepseek’s publish papers suggest it’s much more complex than 1 model per node… I think they recommended like a 576 GPU cluster, with a scheme to split experts.
That, and going by the really small active parameter count of gpt-oss, I bet the model is sparse as heck.
There’s no way the effective batch size is 8, it has to be waaay higher than that.
And perhaps even more importantly, the per-token cost of GPT-5’s API is less than GPT-4’s. That’s why OpenAI was so eager to move everyone onto it, it means more profit for them.
I don’t believe api costs are tied all that closely to the actual cost to openAI. They seem to be selling at a loss, and they may be selling at an even greater loss to make it look like they are progressing. The second openAI seems like they have plateaued, their stock evaluation will crash and it will be game over for them.
I based my argument on actual numbers that can be looked up and verified. You “believe” that they “seem” to be doing something else. Based on what?
To be fair, OpenAI’s negative profitability has been extensively reported on.
Your point stands though; there’s no evidence they’re trying to decrease revenue. On the contrary, that would be a huge red flag to any vested interests.
Their point is that those API prices might not match reality, and the prices may be artificially low to build hype and undercut competitors. We don’t know how much it costs OpenAI, however we do know that they’re not making a profit.
Or it might not. It would be a huge short term risk to do so.
As FaceDeer said, that we truly don’t know.
OpenAI are not profitable today, and don’t estimate they’ll be profitable until 2029, so it’s almost guaranteed that they’re selling their services at a loss. Of course, that’s impossible to verify - since they’re a private company, they don’t have to release financial statements.
That’s not what I’m saying. They’ve all but outright said they’re unprofitable.
But revenue is increasing. Now, if it stops increasing like they’ve “leveled out”, that is a problem.
Hence it’s a stretch to assume they would decrease costs for a more expensive model since that would basically pop their bubble well before 2029.
Revenue is increasing, but according to their own estimates, it has to increase 10x in order for them to become profitable.
How does OpenAI getting less money (with a cheaper model) mean more profit? Am I missing something?
Usually, companies will make their product say 25% cheaper to produce, then sell it to the public at a 20% discount (while loudly proclaiming to the world about that 20% price drop) and pocket that 5% increase in profits. So if OpenAI is dropping the price by x, it’s safe to assume that the efficiency gains work out to x+1.
Thanks! This makes sense, however OpenAI are not yet profitable. It’s definitely possible that they’re losing less money with the new models, though.
That “not profitable” label should be taken with a grain of salt. Startups will do all the creative accounting they can in order to maintain that label. After all, don’t have to pay taxes on negative profits.