The creator of ChatGPT downplays AI usage with a surprising argument

Generative artificial intelligence consumes a huge amount of energy. In 2025, data centers on which AI relies represented about 4% of global electricity consumption, compared to only 2% in 2020. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), AI consumption will double by 2030, reaching more than 940 TWh, which is more than the current consumption of Japan.

Note that a single request to ChatGPT consumes 0.34 Wh. With 1 billion daily requests, ChatGPT represents 310 GWh of energy consumed in a year. Moreover, AI is often criticized for its water consumption. According to OpenAI, the startup behind the chatbot, a single request consumes about 0.32 milliliters of water, which is « a fifteenth of a coffee spoon ».

Also read: « A superintelligence would do better than me » – the shocking statement by the creator of ChatGPT about our jobs

When Sam Altman compares ChatGPT's consumption to that of a human

In the context of an event organized by The Indian Express, Sam Altman, the CEO and founder of OpenAI, wanted to nuance the environmental impact of AI, reports TechCrunch. According to him, it is important to relativize the energy consumption of artificial intelligence. After all, it also takes a lot of energy to… « train a human ».

« It takes about twenty years of life, and all the food eaten during that time, for a human to become intelligent. And this is only the beginning: it also took large-scale evolution of some 100 billion humans, who learned to survive predators and master science and other forms of knowledge, for us to exist », explains Sam Altman.

The entrepreneur laments that criticism of AI often focuses too much on « the amount of energy required to train an AI model, without taking into account the energy a human expends to execute a request ».

Also read: On this site, the AI hires humans to do the work – the sci-fi delirium has become reality

AI vs the human brain

The founder of the startup even adds that AI has a better energy efficiency than a human. AI consumes less energy than a human to answer a question. An already trained AI model is more efficient than an adult who thinks before responding to a request. He estimates that AI is already at least as effective, or even more, than the human brain.

« If you ask a question to ChatGPT, how much energy does it consume, once its model is trained, to answer you, compared to a human? It is likely that, on this criterion, AI has already caught up with humans in terms of energy efficiency », adds Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

With this as unexpected as it is dubious argument, Sam Altman tries to shift the debate to the massive energy consumption of artificial intelligence. The OpenAI leader has nonetheless admitted that it is entirely legitimate to worry about the energy consumption of AI worldwide. For Sam Altman, it is important that the world be able « to turn very quickly to nuclear, wind, or solar ».

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Source : TechCrunch