Recently, the use of Chat GPT has skyrocketed. While Chat GPT is highly useful and educates people about various topics every day, it actually has an extremely harmful effect on the environment-more than other search engines. Chat GPT’s hidden environmental costs are often ignored, and it is important that we recognize them before the use of this AI tool advances even more. 

While it is factual that ChatGPT promotes creativity, its use requires massive amounts of energy for just a simple, small prompt or question. Every generated paragraph runs on vast amounts of electricity, which requires tons of water to stay cool and not overheat. These data centers are filled with thousands of computers that produce the prompts requested by users. When these computers are constantly active, they expel a lot of heat, making it necessary for something to cool it down. Water is the material used to do so. As the demand for Chat GPT prompts escalates, immense amounts of water are being wasted. Studies show that ChatGPT specifically uses the most amount of energy compared to other search engines, and it is important to spread awareness of the negative effects of this increasingly popular learning tool. 

Here are a few simple ways to reduce energy waste from ChatGPT:

• Decipher whether using AI is really necessary before generating.
• Support search engines/tech companies that use renewable energy to power their servers.
• Delete the ChatGPT app from your device.