ChatGPT has enormous hidden costs that could throttle AI development

AI chatbots have a problem: They lose money on every chat.

The enormous cost of running today’s large language models, which underpin tools like ChatGPT and Bard, is limiting their quality and threatening to throttle the global AI boom they’ve sparked.

Their expense, and the limited availability of the computer chips they require, is also constraining which companies can afford to run them and pressuring even the world’s richest companies to turn chatbots into moneymakers sooner than they may be ready to.