ChatGPT: this is how much it costs OpenAI per day
robort - 2023-06-03 13:21:33
ChatGPT, with its extraordinary popularity and impact on society, has a particularly onerous maintenance cost. OpenAI has to spend about 700 million dollars a day in order to keep the ChatGPT infrastructure operational.
This is an estimate elaborated by the research firm SemiAnalysis and which took into consideration the costs of maintaining the servers necessary for the infrastructure to function.
However, the current costs could be even higher, as the estimate is based on GPT-3, the previous version of the AI model that enables ChatGPT. OpenAI's newer GPT-4 may have even higher operating costs.
The high operational cost of an infrastructure underlying artificial intelligence is obviously not an exclusive aspect of ChatGPT: all conversational AIs are particularly expensive to manage.
And it's why Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, is nonetheless hard at work developing a proprietary AI chip, known internally by the codename of Athena.
The specialized processor would be in development since 2019 and is already available to some selected employees of Microsoft and OpenAI.
The development of the chip will allow, at least in the intentions of the Redmond giant, to replace NVIDIA GPUs with a more efficient hardware solution and therefore with less operating costs.
SemiAnalysis also claims, in this regard, that Athena could lead to cost reductions per chip of a third compared to NVIDIA solutions. Microsoft, which recently signed an agreement with NVIDIA in the AI field, does not aim to replace the latter's chips outright.
According to the information available, Athena could be made available, again internally, early next year.
