OpenAI is a leader in AI-powered chatbots, such as Microsoft’s Bing Chat or Google’s Bard. But how much does it cost this company to keep their chatbots running? According to Dylan Patel, chief analyst at semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, OpenAI could be spending up to $700,000 a day just to maintain their ChatGPT servers. With so much power needed to analyze the database and create a suitable response, you don’t have to be surprised at the amount of money that goes into keeping this AI running.
The costs can go even higher if you consider the model OpenAI has used. GPT-3.5 model is comparatively less powerful than the most recent version, GPT-4. Afzal Ahmad and Dylan Patel, both from SemiAnalysis, talked to Forbes about the expenses to train ChatGPT’s language model, which are estimated to be in millions. However, these just pale in comparison to the operational and inference costs, which the analysts say are much more than the training costs on a weekly basis.
So, how does OpenAI finance such a huge expenditure? The answer seems to be through their sales to developers. Companies who use ChatGPT have to pay OpenAI to access their language model. One such example is Nick Walton, the CEO of Latitude, who builds an AI dungeon game utilizing the ChatGPT. Initially, he had to pay about $200,000 a month for running costs including Amazon Web Services, but then he changed the language software provider, which backed AI21, and his monthly fee dropped to around $100,000.
SpaceX recently ran one of their Starship orbital launches, which had an unexpected consequence. A minivan left in the danger zone was destroyed when it was hit by some of the rocket’s debris, and the rear windshield shattered in the incident. Worse yet, the first stage of the rocket doesn’t separate from the second stage and the massive rocket exploded mid-air. Despite this failure, SpaceX and Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, celebrated the launch, as it had performed much better than expected.
All in all, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a revolutionary AI-powered tool that developers can use to create powerful chatbot applications. But while every great technological advancement must come with costs, OpenAI manages to keep those costs low through their sales and language software providers. They have also begun to plot the cognitive future of AI-driven conversations in the form of their GPT-4 model. Although their success is remarkable, it has resulted in costs that are hard to ignore on a day-to-day basis.
