How much energy does agentic AI actually use? One scientist tracked every prompt he sent

Tech companies say typical AI prompts use little energy. Zeke Hausfather’s experiment suggests AI agents are a different story.

[Source Images: Hrach/Adobe Stock, MR Vector/Adobe Stock]

As a climate scientist, Zeke Hausfather uses artificial intelligence every day for research and data analysis. But he kept wondering how much energy all that AI use was consuming. So over eight weeks this summer, he tracked the 1,138 prompts he typed into Claude Code and estimated how much electricity they consumed at........

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