OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express.
Altman, who was in India for a major AI summit, dismissed concerns about AI’s water usage as “totally fake” although he admitted there was an issue when data centers used evaporative cooling.
“Now that we don’t do that, you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality.”
He agreed that concerns about energy consumption are “fair,” noting that “the world is now using so much AI.” He suggested moving towards nuclear, wind, or solar energy swiftly.
Since tech companies aren’t legally required to disclose their energy and water usage, scientists have been trying to study it independently. Data centers have been linked to rising electricity prices.
An interviewer referenced a conversation with Bill Gates, asking if a single ChatGPT query uses the equivalent of 1.5 iPhone battery charges, to which Altman responded, “There’s no way it’s anything close to that much.”
Altman criticized discussions about ChatGPT’s energy usage as “unfair,” especially comparisons of the energy needed to train an AI model versus a human performing one inference query.
“But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,” Altman said. “It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat to become smart. Plus, it took the evolution of the 100 billion people who ever lived and learned to avoid predators and figure out science to produce you.”
Altman argued that the real comparison is, “If you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once its model is trained versus a human? Probably, AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis when measured that way.”
You can watch the full interview below. The conversation about water and energy usage begins at around 26:35.