Sam Altman Compares AI Training Energy to the 20-Year Cost of Educating a Human

Altman Reframes the AI Energy Debate

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered a provocative new angle on the criticism of AI energy consumption, drawing an unexpected comparison to the cost of human intelligence development. The remark earned over 5,000 upvotes on r/singularity, making it one of the most viral AI comments of the week.

Altman stated: "People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model … But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart."

The Analogy: Merits and Limits

The comparison reframes AI training costs within a broader context of intelligence development. By highlighting that human cognition also requires substantial energy investment over decades, Altman challenges the framing of AI energy use as categorically excessive.

Human brain metabolism: roughly 20W continuously over a lifetime

Training a GPT-4 scale model: estimated tens of GWh

Key difference: AI can create many instances far faster than biological development allows

Community Reaction

Responses were split. Some praised the fresh perspective, noting it highlights how rarely we question the energy cost of human education. Others criticized it as a false equivalence that ignores the scale of AI deployment, energy sourcing (renewables vs. fossil fuels), and the concentrated grid impact of AI training. As environmental scrutiny of AI infrastructure intensifies, Altman's analogy is likely to remain a reference point for both defenders and critics.