Sam Altman Calls AI Water Usage Claims ‘Totally Insane’

The chief executive of OpenAI is pushing back hard against claims that artificial intelligence is draining the planet’s resources.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit during an interview hosted by The Indian Express, Altman dismissed viral claims that using ChatGPT consumes massive amounts of water.

“We used to do evaporative cooling in data centres, but now that we don’t do that. You see these like things on the internet, where ‘don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever… This is completely untrue. Totally insane. No connection to reality,” Altman said at the Express Adda event.

Data centers have long relied on water for cooling, though newer facilities are shifting to different methods. Even so, studies and projections from water and energy researchers suggest that total resource use from AI infrastructure is expected to rise as demand grows.

Altman, however, made clear he believes some of the loudest water-related claims are exaggerated.

Energy use is ‘fair’ concern, he says

While rejecting the water figures, Altman acknowledged that energy use is a more legitimate issue.

“What is fair though is the energy consumption, not per query, but in total because the world is now using so much AI is real and we need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly,” he said.

The rapid expansion of AI systems has led to a surge in new data center construction worldwide. Altman argued that instead of framing AI’s power demand as uniquely problematic, governments and companies should accelerate investment in nuclear, wind, and solar energy.

The human training defense

Altman suggested that if we are going to count the kilowatt-hours used to build an AI, we should do the same for people. He pointed out that humans don’t just happen; they require decades of resources.

“But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,” Altman said during an interview. “It takes like 20 years of life, and all the food you eat before that time, before you get smart.”

He went further, suggesting that humanity’s collective learning should factor into the equation. “And not only that, it took the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion people that have ever lived and learned not to get eaten by predators and learned how to figure out science and whatever, to produce you.”

Altman proposed what he considers a fairer benchmark: compare the energy cost of one trained AI answering a question versus one trained human performing the same task. By that measure, he argued, “AI has probably already caught up on an energy efficiency basis.”

Altman’s “meat computer” analogy hasn’t sat well with everyone. On social media, critics argued that comparing a child’s growth and the history of human evolution to a server farm is dehumanizing.

Sridhar Vembu, co-founder of Zoho Corporation, was among those unimpressed. In a post on X, the billionaire stated, “I do not want to see a world where we equate a piece of technology to a human being.” He added, “I work hard as a technologist to see a world  where we don’t allow technology to dominate our lives, instead it should quietly recede into the background.”

Musk’s space data center plan ‘ridiculous’

Altman was asked about Elon Musk’s ambitions to launch data centers into low Earth orbit, a concept Musk recently cited as a key reason for merging his rocket company SpaceX with AI firm xAI. Google has also explored similar ideas.

Altman dismissed the notion as impractical, at least for now.

“I honestly think the idea of putting data centers in space is ridiculous,” Altman said, according to reports. He cited prohibitive launch costs compared to terrestrial power generation and the near-impossibility of repairing hardware like broken processors in orbit.

“If you just do the rough math of launch costs relative to the cost of power we can do on Earth, just say nothing of how you’re gonna fix a broken GPU in space, we are not there yet,” he added. Altman acknowledged that space could one day host certain AI applications but insisted “orbital data centers are not something that’s going to matter at scale this decade.”

As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, questions about power grids, water systems, and sustainability are becoming harder to ignore.

Altman’s comments signal a more direct pushback from AI leaders against environmental criticism, even as they acknowledge that the sector’s total energy demand will continue to climb. 

With governments weighing regulations and communities scrutinizing new data center projects, the clash between AI growth and environmental limits appears far from settled.

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