OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it takes 20 years and food to train a human, and that the debate over AI's energy consumption is unfair
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on The Indian Express's talk show on February 20, 2026, for an hour-long interview about AI. In the show, Altman talked about AI's energy issues and space data centers.
'Humans use lot of energy too': OpenAI's Sam Altman on resources consumed by AI, data centers | Technology News - The Indian Express
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https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-elon-musk-space-data-centres-10543749/
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Altman was in India to speak at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 , and as part of that visit appeared on Express Adda, an interview program on The Indian Express.
When asked about the energy consumption of AI during the interview, Altman argued, 'There are too many unfair arguments comparing the cost of a human executing a single inference query with the cost of training an AI model.' He added, 'Training a human requires a huge amount of energy. It takes 20 years for a human to become smart, and you have to take into account all the food we ate during that time. Furthermore, the 100 billion humans who have lived to date have evolved extensively to avoid being eaten by predators and understand science, which has led to smarter humans.' He argued that a fair comparison between humans and AI is more cost-effective.
The interview also discussed the idea of 'locating a data center in space.' AI data centers emit large amounts of heat, making cooling a challenge, and the idea of 'minimizing cooling costs by locating a data center in space' is being seriously considered. Even taking into account launch costs, space data centers are expected to be cheaper to operate than those on the ground.
Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are competing to develop a 'space AI data center' - GIGAZINE
Regarding such space data center plans, CEO Altman said, 'The idea of putting a data center in space is ridiculous at this point. Considering the estimated launch costs and the difficulty of repairing a broken GPU in space, the idea of putting a data center in orbit will not make sense for the next 10 years.' He took a negative stance.
In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Altman said, 'While people are losing their jobs due to AI, there is also 'AI washing' going on, where managers unfairly use AI as a reason for firing people.'
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