OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on stage at the AI Impact Summit in India, addressed questions from a reporter for The Indian Express regarding the resources required to train and operate generative AI models. He described the criticism as "unfair" and compared the energy required to raise a human with the consumption of AI data centers. Altman said, "It takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes about 20 years of life and all the food eaten during that time to become smart. Furthermore, it required the evolutionary process of 100 billion people who have lived so far learning not to be eaten by predators." He added that when comparing the energy required to answer a single question after model training, "AI has probably already caught up in terms of energy efficiency." Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho, who was present at the venue, posted on X, "I do not want to live in a world that considers part of technology equal to humans."


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