Sam Altman wants to remind you that people also use a lot of energy

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, spoke about the environmental impact of AI this week speaking at an event organized by The Indian Express.

For one thing, Altman – who was in India for a major AI conference – said concerns about AI’s water consumption are “false,” though he acknowledged that it was a real problem when “we used to cool water in data centers.”

“Now that we don’t do that, you see these things online where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water per query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is untrue, insane, out of touch with reality.”

He added that it is “good” to be concerned about “the use of power – not in every question, but in general, because the world is using more AI.” In his view, this means that the world must “go to nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”

There is no legal requirement for tech companies to disclose how much energy and water they use, so scientists have been doing so trying to learn it on their own. The data center was also connected rising electricity prices.

Referring to a previous conversation with Bill Gates, the interviewer asked if it was correct to say that one ChatGPT query currently uses the equivalent of iPhone 1.5 batteries, to which Altman replied, “Nothing even close to that.”

Altman also lamented that much of the discussion about ChatGPT’s power consumption is “unfair,” especially when it focuses on “how much power it takes to train an AI model, compared to how much money it takes to ask a single question.”

“But it also takes a lot of energy to train someone,” Altman said. “It takes 20 years of life and all the food you eat during that time to be smart.” And not only that, it took a massive evolution of 100 billion people who lived and learned not to be eaten by enemies and learned how to choose science and everything, to make you.

So in his opinion, the right comparison is, “If you ask a question of ChatGPT, how much energy does it take once its model is trained to answer this question against a person? And maybe, AI has already started to work on energy consumption, measured in that way.”

You can watch the full interview below. Discussions about water and energy use begin at 26:35.