Researchers Build Backdoor Method to Rank AI Model Energy Use as Big Three Stay Silent

relianceschool · reddit · 2026-09-29

AI's rise is driving a historic surge in electricity demand, but data center consumption ultimately comes down to millions of individual queries — and models vary wildly in efficiency, from gas guzzlers to Priuses.

None of the big three proprietary developers — Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google — disclose how much energy their models consume per query, leaving users with no way to compare.

The Sustainable AI Group, a research and advisory firm, developed a backdoor estimation method to fill the gap and on Tuesday released an interactive dashboard ranking AI models by energy intensity.

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