Ditch the niceties in AI prompts to save energy use, say researchers

• 01ChatGPT processes around 2.5 billion queries every day
• 02Google processes 16 billion queries per day, the majority of which have integrated AI summaries
• 03A UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) report found that removing polite words like 'please' and 'thank you' from AI prompts could reduce ChatGPT's energy consumption by up to 25 per cent
• 04Removing unnecessary words from prompts could save 87 to 98 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, equivalent to the annual residential electricity use of up to 760,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa
• 05AI currently accounts for about 20 per cent of the energy used by data centres, projected to double to around 40 per cent in the next few years
• 06By 2030, AI alone could consume around 378 terawatt-hours per year and data centres could use 945 TWh in total — almost 3 per cent of projected global electricity use
• 07The 9.3 trillion litres of water projected to be needed by data centres by 2030 is enough to meet the minimum annual domestic water needs of all 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa
• 08Generating an image uses 60 times more energy than a text query
• 09A complex video uses up to 8000 times more energy than text

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A UN University report warns that artificial intelligence's energy consumption is growing rapidly, with ChatGPT alone processing 2.5 billion daily queries. Researchers found that removing polite words like "please" and "thank you" from prompts could reduce energy use by up to 25 per cent and save 87 to 98 gigawatt-hours annually. The study projects that AI alone could consume 378 terawatt-hours yearly by 2030 and require 9.3 trillion litres of water for data centres.