Running AI models can be resource intensive. That much is true, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wants us to look at it from a different perspective. Speaking in India at an AI summit, the OpenAI CEO dismissed concerns over water usage in AI, and also suggested that training humans consumes just as much energy too.
OpenAI CEO denies water usage claims
There have been some reports that suggest for each query we submit to an AI consumes 17 gallons of water. However, according to Altman, the OpenAI CEO argues against those claims of water usage. He even went as far as saying it was “totally fake.”
He was quoted as saying, “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. This is completely untrue.”
However, as TechCrunch points out, there is currently no legal requirement for tech companies to disclose how much energy and water they consume. This means that scientists have to figure out those numbers for themselves independently. Altman also denied a claim that Bill Gates had previously made, where he suggested that every single ChatGPT query uses the equivalent of 1.5 iPhone battery charges. “There’s no way it’s anything close to that much.”
Training humans is just as resource intensive
Altman also brought up an interesting point. He said that it takes a lot of energy to train humans too. “But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart. And not only that, it took the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion people that have ever lived and learned not to get eaten by predators and learned how to figure out science and whatever, to produce you.”
He adds, “If you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once its model is trained to answer that question versus a human? And probably, AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis, measured that way.”
To be fair, Altman does have a good point. But at the same time, humans need food to survive. It’s not just about “training” or getting smarter for us. Whereas with AI, it’s a choice on whether or not we want to commit those resources to the technology.
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