{"id":494761,"date":"2026-02-23T20:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494761\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T20:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:10:10","slug":"sam-altman-defends-ais-energy-toll-by-saying-it-also-takes-a-lot-to-train-a-human-sam-altman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494761\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman defends AI\u2019s energy toll by saying it also takes a lot to \u2018train a human\u2019 | Sam Altman"},"content":{"rendered":"

The OpenAI boss, Sam Altman<\/a>, has tried to ease concerns about how much power is used by artificial intelligence models by comparing it to the amount of energy required by human development.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model \u2013 but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,\u201d Altman told the Indian Express<\/a> recently while in India for the AI Impact summit. \u201cIt takes about 20 years of life \u2013 and all the food you consume during that time \u2013 before you become smart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that defense, he said that the public assessment of AI\u2019s energy consumption was \u201cfair\u201d, adding: \u201cWe need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those remarks come amid growing discussion about the environmental impact of the datacenters required to power AI models \u2013 and, more generally, about technology\u2019s possible impact on society.<\/p>\n

Datacenters accounted for about 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency<\/a>. The organization projects that such consumption will increase about 15% each year from 2024 to 2030, more than four times faster than the growth of electricity consumption from all other sectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe demand for new datacenters cannot be met in a sustainable way,\u201d Noman Bashir, a computing and climate impact fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\u2019s climate and sustainability consortium, told MIT\u2019s news outlet<\/a>. \u201cThe pace at which companies are building new datacenters means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December, more than 230 environmental groups<\/a> called for a moratorium on building datacenters in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans\u2019 economic, environmental, climate and water security,\u201d their letter states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the AI conference, Altman also downplayed concerns about the water datacenters require.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater is totally fake. It used to be true. We used to do evaporative cooling in datacenters, but now \u2026 we don\u2019t do that,\u201d Altman said. \u201cYou see things on the internet, [like]: \u2018Don\u2019t use ChatGPT. It\u2019s 17 gallons of water for each query or whatever.\u2019 This is completely untrue \u2013 totally insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

CNBC reported<\/a> that \u201csome newer data centers no longer rely on water at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

The director of the Southern New Hampshire University office of sustainability, Mike Weinstein, told the Guardian he was skeptical of the argument from Altman and other AI advocates that the power such infrastructure demands is justified because the technology will help alleviate global problems.<\/p>\n

A September 2025 report<\/a> from OpenAI on how people use ChatGPT found that 70% of messages to the bot were not work related.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t look like the majority of use of that was for figuring out how we solve challenges in food systems and energy systems, so that would be my skepticism of saying this technology is worth it because I have yet to see it demonstrated,\u201d Weinstein said.<\/p>\n

Altman\u2019s remarks generated a backlash online, with some people describing them as dystopian.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s saying a really big spreadsheet and a baby are morally equivalent,\u201d Matt Stoller, research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, posted on X<\/a>. \u201cOne reason to believe that life is divine is so that you don\u2019t allow sociopaths like this anywhere near anything important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sports commentator and TV host Jeff Johnson compared Altman\u2019s comments to the Netflix series Black Mirror, which explores potential harms from new technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cNotice the disturbing techy parlance that he uses to describe the general human experience,\u201d Johnson wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cTraining?!\u2019 Too many people are falling for [it]. Y\u2019all really lettin these geeks destroy the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The OpenAI boss, Sam Altman, has tried to ease concerns about how much power is used by artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-494761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}