Quick napkin math time!

Steam reached a new peak of 42 million concurrent players today [1]. An average/mid-tier gaming PC uses 0.2 kWh per hour [2]. 42 million * 0.2 gives 8,400,000 kWh per hour, or 8,400 MWh per hour.

By contrast, training GPT3 was estimated to have used 1,300 MWh of energy [3].

This does not account for training costs of newer models, nor inference costs. But we know inference costs are extraordinarily inexpensive and energy efficient [2]. The lowest estimate of energy cost for 1 hour of Steam's peak concurrent player count uses 6.5x more energy than all of the energy that went into training GPT3.

[1]: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-has-already-set-a-ne...

[2]: https://jamescunliffe.co.uk/is-gen-ai-bad-for-the-environmen...

[3]: https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watt...

How many lives would AI have to save for you to say the energy cost is worth it?

Far less than you'd think for local LLMs.