OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defended how much energy artificial intelligence needs in an interview on Friday, comparing AI to humans.
Altman, who was attending the India AI Impact summit this weekend, agreed that AI's energy consumption is a legitimate concern and said, "We need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar energy very quickly."
However, when asked about previous AI comments by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who noted that the human brain is more energy-efficient at thinking than today's AI models, Altman seemed to push back.
"People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model … But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human," Altman said. "It takes like 20 years of life, and all the food you eat before that time, before you get smart."
AI data centers — buildings that host rows upon rows of servers that run AI — typically use large amounts of water to prevent the hardware from overheating because of how much energy it requires to operate. An $800 million Meta AI data center planned for Cheyenne, Wyoming, is expected to "use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined," the Associated Press reported.
Altman also called accusations that ChatGPT uses gallons of water "completely untrue, totally insane" and had "no connection to reality."
Large AI data centers reportedly require up to five million gallons of water per day, equivalent to a city of 50,000 people, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. But it was Altman's comments comparing humans to AI that went viral after the interview, sparking other tech leaders to comment. Sridhar Vembu, the co-founder and chief scientist of software company Zoho Corporation, criticized Altman's stance on X.
"I do not want to see a world where we equate a piece of technology to a human being," Vembu wrote. "I work hard as a technologist to see a world where we don't allow technology to dominate our lives, instead it should quietly recede into the background."
AI skepticism and concern have been growing both online and offline, and community residents and environmental activists have increasingly pushed back against data center development across the U.S. Many community residents and environmental activists have pushed back against their development and installations.
Last Wednesday, a video went viral after Climate Revolution Action Network, an unfunded, Gen Z-led 501(c)(4) with a focus on climate and environmental justice policy, successfully shut down New Brunswick, N.J.'s plans to build a small data center.
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