Sam Altman: Humans Are Energy Hogs Too

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently addressed growing concerns regarding artificial intelligence's environmental footprint during an event hosted by The Indian Express.

During his visit to India for a significant AI summit, Altman dismissed current anxieties surrounding AI's water consumption as "totally fake." However, he conceded that this had been a legitimate concern in the past when "we used to do evaporative cooling in data centers."

"Now that we don’t do that," Altman elaborated, "you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever." He unequivocally stated, "This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality."

Altman acknowledged that it is "fair" to express concern about "the energy consumption — not per query, but in total, because the world is now using so much AI." From his perspective, this necessitates a global shift "towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly."

Currently, there are no legal mandates requiring technology companies to disclose their energy and water consumption, prompting scientists to undertake independent studies. Furthermore, data centers have been identified as a contributing factor to escalating electricity prices.

Referencing a prior discussion with Bill Gates, the interviewer inquired if it was accurate that a single ChatGPT query consumes energy equivalent to 1.5 iPhone battery charges. Altman firmly refuted this, stating, "There’s no way it’s anything close to that much."

Altman further expressed his dissatisfaction, calling many discussions surrounding ChatGPT’s energy footprint "unfair." He specifically criticized comparisons that emphasize "how much energy it takes to train an AI model, relative to how much it costs a human to do one inference query."

"But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human," Altman argued, elaborating, "It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart." He extended this perspective, adding, "And not only that, it took the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion people that have ever lived and learned not to get eaten by predators and learned how to figure out science and whatever, to produce you."

Therefore, in his view, the appropriate comparison is: "If you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once its model is trained to answer that question versus a human?" He suggested that, measured in this manner, "probably, AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis."

The complete interview is accessible for viewing, with the discussion on water and energy consumption commencing at approximately the 26:35 mark.