Sam Altman Would Like To Remind You That Humans Use a Lot of Energy, Too (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0180846238
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/23/1430235/sam-altman-would-like-to-remind-you-that-humans-use-a-lot-of-energy-too
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/sam-altman-would-like-remind-you-that-humans-use-a-lot-of-energy-too/
In an interview with Indian Express, Altman acknowledged that evaporative cooling in data centers once made water usage a real concern but said that is no longer the case, calling internet claims of 17 gallons of water per query "completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality."
On energy, he conceded it is "fair" to worry about total consumption given how heavily the world now relies on AI, and called for a rapid shift toward nuclear, wind and solar power. He took particular issue with comparisons that pit the cost of training a model against a single human inference, noting it "takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat" before a person gets smart -- and that on a per-query basis, AI has "probably already caught up on an energy efficiency basis."
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/sam-altman-would-like-remind-you-that-humans-use-a-lot-of-energy-too/
This is generally true (Score:5, Insightful)
Even humans' brains use a lot of energy... except for Sam Altman's.
Re: (Score:2)
A human brain can make intelligent decisions just eating a hamburger. AI is incredibly inefficient let's be real. This whole silicon based approach clearly needs a revisit.
Re:This is generally true (Score:4, Interesting)
Human brains use very little energy, though. 20 years of food do not go to training a brain but growing the entire organism AND doing a great deal of work.
And this isn't coming from Sam Altman's brain, it's just the latest gaslighting from the AI industry. I would expect greed on the scale of Altman's to require as much energy as any other brain consumes. Sometimes energy isn't directed towards noble ends.
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Out side of some specific objective context comparing human energy use to AI is kinda silly. At the societal conversation level, Sam is ignoring the 'humans' are ultimately the reason we are doing any of this.
They will be there anyway. We have an economy so that the collective 'we' have things we need like food, a warm place to sleep, and things we want entertainment, presweetened breakfast cereal, fast cars, etc.
Tools increase productivity which means humans can do less work and live better but you can't
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> Sam is ignoring the 'humans' are ultimately the reason we are doing any of this.
It seems to me that you're ignoring the fact that Slopman isn't "ignoring the humans", he just wants to dispose of most of them.
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Your brain and the brain of your fridae.asia buddy sure use a lot of energy but 99% of it is wasted to produce hallucinations which are useless to everybody and even harmful to society at large most of the time.
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> and even harmful to society at large most of the time.
So what you're saying is that I'm powerful? Thanks, coward troll! Society at large is a shitfest so I'm now swelling with pride.
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> I know that your bunch make a pride of wanting to destroy society and yes, like the devil, you are very powerful
The devil got exiled for asking questions. That doesn't sound very powerful to me. In fact it sounds like "God" "is" a little bitch who can't justify "his" actions.
Re: (Score:2)
> You forget that God - is justice - his Word and deed is infallible.
I agree with everyone else- take your meds. Maybe increase the dosage. And tell your therapist about this too.
Besides, how could Jesus be the Messiah when he never fulfilled even ONE of the Messianic prophecies?
In short, Jesus was a liar and a fraud.
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Jesus did not claim to be any Messhias.
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> You forget that God - is justice - his Word and deed is infallible.
Man created god in his own image, and only the most easily led of sheep fail to comprehend why and what for.
overpopulation (Score:5)
Of course, we all know that half of global problems (climate change, pollution, too much energy usage, etc.) would disappear if half of the human population would vanish. But without Thanos, it's not like half of us would volunteer, right?
So, we don't have control over how many people there are. We DO have control over how much electricity we feed into AI systems.
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"A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"
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And the women there have three tits!
This (Score:2)
Sacking all the workers and replacing them with Altmans masturbary fantasy AI bots isn't going to make those people go away - they'll still be consuming the same amount of water and food so his whole argument is specious beyond belief.
Thing is we're not overpopulated (Score:2)
There's plenty of food, water, shelter & medicine for everyone, and if anything maintaining birthrates is a challenge. Current stats indicate we need 2.7 bbw to maintain and woman want 2.6 kids on average. At least in a modern well run country like Denmark or Germany (the numbers are higher in shit hole countries, like America).
As for Thanos, our problem is [1]distribution [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPbtPI0wru0
So– (Score:2)
Use people to power AI datacenters?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't give them ideas. This is how you get The Matrix.
Lmafo (Score:5, Insightful)
One human brain takes roughly 15 watts of power, one data center takes 100MW and often isn’t enough to train top models in reasonable time. A low quality llm prompt request requires 40 watts hours of power, the same as three humans hours of labor yet typically lower quality returns the results of a 1 minute basic search. While it’s possible to cannibalize models to train new models the slop recursion poisons the supply like defecating into your own water supply, as does scraping post humanist content from the internet and even other sources it’s leached into. What we are doing is depleting our fuel reserves and driving up costs all in the name of unfounded gains which can’t possibly cover the actual costs. With a bubble size half a dozen times larger than the subprime mortgage scam crisis, when it pops it’s going to destroy the remains of what’s left of the remaining bits this administration hasn’t crushed out of stupidity and greed.
Re: (Score:2)
- The amount of energy and effort to deliver that 15 watts (food) is around 150W (10:1) based on the US needs.
- It takes years of investment before that one human brain can function at that level.
- There's also a decline at the end where it's not delivering what it used too.
- There are also all the additional creature comforts that we need to function (lighting, air condition, etc, etc.)
With that said... AI's are still no where near the same value proposition as the human brain (I actively use them an
Car analogy following the same logic (Score:1)
Human drivers sometimes drive faster than the speed limit. So self-driving cars should be allowed to drive as fast as they want.
Re: Car analogy following the same logic (Score:2)
Whatever argument it takes to let tech billionaires do whatever they want. -- majority of the media
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Like the arguments you use for supporting Trump?
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"So self-driving cars should be allowed to drive as fast as they want."
They are. Who is held accountable otherwise?
The point is interesting, but reality is worse.
Well, he _does_ have a point. (Score:2)
Looking at bizarre shit-show that is morning and evening commute here in Germany and the insane waste caused by the infrastructure required to keep office workers "working" and those countless bullshit-jobs afloat, I have to say he has a point. How heavy that one weighs or how valid it finally is I can't say just now, but he does have a point.
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No he doesn't, not in the slightest. And what point do you think your experience with commutes says he does?
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He doesn't have a point, though. He doesn't want to eliminate make-work. He wants to profit from having it done by computers instead of humans. The logical conclusion of which is crashing world economies by creating unprecedented numbers of unemployed people at an unprecedented rate. Would the numbers be bigger only because we have more people? No, they would also be bigger because we also have an unprecedented percentage of people doing jobs that don't actually matter, or that in fact make things worse for
So it's humans or AI (Score:2)
Honestly, I'd trade Sam Altman for some AI power. Not so much the rest of humanity (some exceptions apply).
Like Zuck/Ellison/Musk, only more polite (Score:2)
Sam Altman lives in his own hallucination, spouting bullshit.
What he reaily meant was (Score:4, Insightful)
I want you tot let me build my datacenters so I can displace the salary you get and the energy you use and bring it under my control. That's what he really wants. But I'm doubtful of his claim that AI can do tasks with less energy. A human runs about 2.3kwh a day, and ~800W at work. Running claude code to do 1.3kwh during a typical coding day. So what is more efficient? Another thing to consider is neurons use about a million times less energy to function and do a heck of a lot more than a transistor. Sillicon is not going to compete with wet ware on energy costs.
Biased Bullshit. (Score:2)
The Rest of Us have been forced to buy shitty squiggly light bulbs and get fined for not maintaining a mandatory grass lawn under maximum water restrictions. We have to buy our own solar panels just to TRY and keep up with the cost of Greed shilling "free" services while raping our electric infrastructure.
Turn off ALL AI and shitcoin processing in the United States for one fiscal quarter. THEN have Sam Altman tell us how much we humans cost compared to the arrogance driving Greed N. Corruption. Fucking e
Sam's middle finger to humanity (Score:2)
Sam says AI is good, Sam says AI competes with humans in terms of resources, I'm deducting that Sam clearly prefers the existence of AI queries over humans, in the context of a world with finite resources. What a great example of a human being you are, Sam.
The math is secondary to the message. (Score:2)
There's plenty of room to quibble about how dubious his numbers are; but that's all secondary to the fact that he's not even pretending that the comparison is anything but one between humans and his preferred replacements at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
Notice that the only value he sees in Humanity is as "useful and compliant factory workers", for times-adjusted values of 'factory'.
He likely considers a family reunion picnic to be a waste of resources.
"ChatGPT never needs to put its daughter into piano lessons - think of the savings!!!" - probably.
How Much Does the World Rely on AI? (Score:3)
> On energy, he conceded it is "fair" to worry about total consumption given how heavily the world now relies on AI
Just how heavily does the world rely on AI? A lot? Some? Not as much as Sam believes? Enough to cover the cost of building and running these data centers? Anybody have any real figures and citations?
All that just to say (Score:2)
> On energy, he conceded it is "fair" to worry about total consumption given how heavily the world now relies on AI ...
Yeah, sooooo heavily. /s
Soylent Green (Score:1)
If Sam could get away with it he would turn people into Soylent Green to power his data centers.
So, what's the point of AI, then? (Score:2)
Many of these techbros miss that the point of the economy is to provide a context for human livelihood. We could build a perfectly decent Earth without any AIs at all, if we decided to. For humans, there is no point to Earth without humans.
I could understand making an argument for some sort of evolutionary thing, though I wouldn't agree with it. But right now, today, that is also a dumbass argument. In a human-scale apocalypse (high-death-rate plague, nuclear winter, asteroid, etc), AIs will be among th
50GJ (Score:2)
If you put, say, 50GJ into a human over 20 years you get an adult human being.
If you put the same energy into AI you get an offensive bogus video ad for a political campaign.
Just kill all humans then... (Score:2)
So when someone tells his agentic AI "solve energy crisis" - it will just kill all humans based on Altman's hints?
Get rid of all humans then (Score:2)
and let only AI keep running. Saves lots of energy. Probably AI will sooner or later decide this anyway.
It really shows how they think of you (Score:2)
You are literally just a number on a spreadsheet and an input into a process.
You are absolutely not human to a billionaire. You're livestock.
Fuck you, Sam (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck Sam Altman and his ravenous need to destroy the planet for bragging rights.
Honestly, I feel like there should be a disorder named after Sam Altman to highlight his sociopathy and utter disdain for anyone who doesn't "share his vision".
Re: (Score:1)
No one wants to ready your posts.
Re: (Score:3)
Sam Atlman is a psychopathic, soicopathic, monstrous, murderous thug. And it's appalling that anyone keeps looking to him as some kind of "leader".
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Yes, and in a fight to the death with Elon Musk he's the one you root for. That and hopefully succumbing afterward to his injuries.
Looking to Sam Altman as a leader is literally what capitalism is. Capitalism is engaging in sociopathy assuming you won't be the victim; late stage unregulated capitalism is what we are seeing, Sam Altman is just a sad face of it.
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Take your meds.
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism is literally nothing more than the means of production being in private hands. It ranges from Euro-style social democracies to full on laissez-faire dog-eat-dog dystopias. And stop using that tired phrase "late stage" as if both this outcome and its downfall are inevitable.
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He's not alone, though, and while not all in his bandwagon are as arrogantly unpleasant as he is, all of them are equally harmful.