Altman Defends AI: “Raising a Child Costs Energy Too”
Sam Altman has found a way to answer criticism about Artificial Intelligence’s environmental impact: compare it to humans. Speaking at an Indian Express event during an AI summit in India, the OpenAI CEO said that training a human being for twenty years costs a lot, so the comparison with ChatGPT is fairer than it looks.
But come on. A human being lives, works, creates, reproduces, contributes to society in ways no probabilistic system can replicate. Reducing a human life to a training energy cost is a rhetorical move, not a scientific comparison.
On water, Altman called the 64-liter-per-query figure completely false, with no connection to reality. Google published its own numbers for Gemini queries: 0.24 watt-hours of energy and 0.26 milliliters of water. The 64-liter estimate came from a University of California study that included not just data center water but also the water used by the power plants supplying the servers, a methodology widely disputed, and the only public reference available, because companies are not required to disclose their own figures.
The energy impact is real. According to the IEA, global data centers consumed around 415 terawatt-hours, about 1.5% of global electricity. Projections point to nearly double by 2030.
There are no legal obligations forcing tech companies to disclose how much energy and water their data centers consume. Independent researchers build estimates from the outside. Companies can deny any figure without having to provide their own. When Altman says the 64 liters are false, he may be right. But he is asking us to trust his word on data he is not required to make public.
Data centers keep pushing up electricity prices in surrounding areas. A concrete, measurable impact that no evolutionary metaphor can fix. What do you think?
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