Sam Altman pushes back on AI energy and water usage claims

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed public concerns regarding the environmental impact of artificial intelligence during an event in India hosted by The Indian Express. Altman specifically refuted viral claims about the resources required to run AI models, calling online assertions that ChatGPT consumes 17 gallons of water for each query totally fake. He noted that while water consumption was a real issue when data centers relied on evaporative cooling—a method used in data centers for cooling—the industry has moved away from that practice. Regarding the water claims, “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Addressing a metric previously discussed with Bill Gates, Altman also pushed back on the claim that a single ChatGPT query uses the equivalent of 1.5 iPhone battery charges, asserting that there was no way the actual energy usage was close to that amount.

Altman argued that many current discussions regarding ChatGPT’s energy usage are unfair, particularly when comparing the energy required to train an AI model against the energy a human uses to perform a single inference query—which is a request made to an AI model. He suggested that a fair comparison must account for the energy required to develop human intelligence. Altman noted that it takes like 20 years of life and all of the food consumed during that period before a human becomes smart. He pointed out that human development relied on the evolution of the 100 billion people that have ever lived and learned to survive and develop science. When comparing the energy an AI model uses to answer a question once trained against the energy a human requires to do the same, Altman argued that AI has probably already caught up on an energy efficiency basis.

While Altman dismissed per-query environmental concerns, he acknowledged that total energy consumption is a valid concern as the world adopts more AI. To address the growing aggregate demand, Altman stated that the world needs to transition quickly toward alternative energy sources, specifically mentioning nuclear, wind, and solar power.

Why it matters

As AI adoption scales globally, the debate over its environmental footprint is intensifying; Altman’s comments highlight the tension between public perception of AI’s resource intensity and the industry’s internal metrics.