OpenAI CEO also downplayed concerns about how much water datacenters require at AI summit in India
The OpenAI boss, Sam Altman, has tried to ease concerns about how much power is used by artificial intelligence models by comparing it to the amount of energy required by human development.
“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 told the Indian Express recently while in India for the AI Impact summit. “It takes about 20 years of life – and all the food you consume during that time – before you become smart.”
Despite that defense, he said that the public assessment of AI’s energy consumption was “fair”, adding: “We need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”
Those remarks come amid growing discussion about the environmental impact of the datacenters required to power AI models – and, more generally, about how the technology’s possible impact on society.
