Sam Altman argues that AI consumes energy

“One of the things I always find unfair about comparisons is that people often talk about the amount of energy it takes to train an AI model versus the amount of energy a human spends doing inference,” Altman told The Indian Express at an AI event in India. “Training a person also takes a lot of energy.”

According to OpenAI CEO, many people condemn AI models that consume a lot of electricity, but underestimate the years spent nurturing and educating a person to be able to research on their own. “It takes about 20 years of your life, and all the food you eat during that time, for you to become smart,” Altman said, making the crowd laugh.

To supplement his point, Altman says that this “clock” began working thousands of years ago. According to him, it took the extensive evolutionary process of about 100 billion people who have lived in the world to learn how to not be eaten by predators, learn how to learn about science or the like.

At the event, Altman also took question that each ChatGPT query currently uses the amount of energy equivalent to 1.5 iPhone charges. “It can’t be that much,” OpenAI CEO immediately objected.

According to Altman, that may have been true in the past because data centers used to use evaporative cooling. But now, there are new more economical technologies. “Of course, you still see some information on the Internet like ‘don’t use ChatGPT anymore, it consumes 17 gallons (0.065 m3) of water per query’ or something like that,” he continued. “This is completely untrue, completely crazy, has nothing to do with reality.”

The OpenAI CEO added that it is “reasonable” to be concerned about energy consumption here not for each query but overall, because the world is using a lot of artificial intelligence. According to him, instead of criticizing, humanity should quickly switch to renewable energy such as nuclear power, wind and solar power.

In fact, the energy consumption of data centers has become an important topic in recent years as the generative AI wave explodes. In the US, President Donald Trump last month said he was working with technology companies with the goal of “committing to the American people” to ensure people do not have to pay higher electricity bills due to a nearby data center. Last year, consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimated data centers could account for 14% of total electricity demand in the US by 2050.