OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has defended the resource-intensive use of AI by evaluating it to all of the power—and meals—that people require, sparking a wave of backlash throughout social media.
That comparability, consultants in local weather and tech areas say, is misguided, downplays the local weather dangers related to AI, and illustrates the disconnect between tech CEOs and the remainder of society.
Altman’s feedback got here whereas speaking to the Indian Express on the India AI Impression summit. The outlet requested him to deal with a number of the frequent criticisms of AI, together with the quantity of power and water the expertise requires.
“One of many issues that’s all the time unfair on this comparability is individuals discuss how a lot power it takes to coach an AI mannequin relative to how a lot it prices a human to do one inference question,” Altman says.
“Nevertheless it additionally takes lots of power to coach a human,” he continues. “It takes like 20 years of life, and all the meals you eat throughout that point, earlier than you get sensible. And never solely that, it took the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion individuals who have ever lived.”
When contemplating the power wanted to “prepare a human,” Altman claims within the interview that AI has “in all probability” already caught as much as people when it comes to power effectivity.
Misguided comparability
However the tech CEO’s blunt comparability is “misguided,” says Sasha Luccioni, local weather lead of the AI platform Hugging Face.
“On a elementary degree, people and AI fashions don’t use power and pure sources in the identical method, and evaluating the 2 is unnecessary,” she says in an e-mail to Quick Firm.
AI fashions are educated on human knowledge, Luccioni factors out, so if evaluating the 2, “you must also consider the time and sources that went into writing the books and creating the information used to coach AI fashions.”
To Luccioni, Altman’s feedback illustrate a “elementary disconnect” between Large Tech leaders and broader society.
“These billionaires have constructed their fortunes on exploiting human information and the earth’s pure sources, and proceed taking each as a right whereas getting richer by the day,” she provides.
Quick Firm reached out to OpenAI for remark.
AI’s water and power use
Altman’s comparability has drawn explicit ire from these within the local weather area, together with Michael Mann, a climatologist and coauthor, with scientist Peter Hotez, of the 2025 ebook Science Beneath Siege: Combat the 5 Most Highly effective Forces That Threaten Our World.
Certainly, the CEO’s statements tie into the very themes of the ebook. In keeping with Mann, the ebook argues that forces like “plutocrats, professionals, petrostates, phonies, and the press” promote anti-science rhetoric, which then hampers humanity’s potential to deal with every part from pandemics to the local weather disaster.
Actual calculations about AI’s water and power use differ, however many consultants have raised alarms about its huge energy and useful resource wants.
A 2026 report from Global Water Intelligence tasks that “water demand from the AI-driven New Economic system will surge 129% by 2050,” placing much more strain on strained utility methods alongside local weather threats.
The Worldwide Vitality Company has likewise projected that complete knowledge middle consumption, pushed by AI, will double by 2030.
Although Altman dismissed considerations over AI’s water use, he did say that power consumption is a priority, and that because the “world is utilizing a lot AI . . . we have to transfer towards nuclear or wind and photo voltaic in a short time.”
To this point, the AI growth has led to an increase in pure gasoline energy vegetation, although it’s cheaper to construct and run new clear power tasks.
Longtermism and techno-utopianism
In keeping with Mann, Altman’s feedback reek of controversial and doubtlessly harmful viewpoints that he says are frequent amongst tech executives, like longtermism and techno-utopianism.
Longtermism promotes the concept positively influencing the long-term future is a key ethical crucial; it’s a perception that has been linked to the “efficient altruism” motion.
Trying long-term would recommend caring about local weather change, as a result of the consequences of sustained fossil gasoline emissions could have disastrous impacts on people for years to return.
However “longtermists” don’t have a tendency to treat local weather change as an “existential risk.” As a substitute, they concentrate on threats that they are saying expertise can clear up.
Techno utopianism, equally, is a perception that technological advances are the way in which to realize a “perfect” future society.
As Mann sees it, Altman together with different tech CEOs promote an concept that society ought to concentrate on the advantages of AI and different applied sciences whereas “implicitly downplaying the dangers and threats posed within the quick time period, together with the local weather disaster.”
“There may be, as I might remind Altman and his ilk, no financial system on a lifeless planet,” Mann provides.
