Scaling Laws: AI and Energy: What do we know? What are we learning?

Mosharaf Chowdhury, associate professor at the University of Michigan and director of the ML Energy lab, and Dan Zhou, AI researcher at MIT, GoogleX, and Microsoft focused on AI for science and sustainable and energy-efficient AI, join Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to discuss the energy costs of AI. 

They break down exactly how much a energy fuels a single ChatGPT query, why this is difficult to figure out, how we might improve energy efficiency, and what kinds of policies might minimize AI’s growing energy and environmental costs. 

Leo Wu provided excellent research assistance on this podcast.

Read more from Mosharaf:

• https://ml.energy/ 
• https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/

Read more from Dan:

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03003
• https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11581