this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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“But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,” Altman said. “It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart. 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.”

So in his view, the fair comparison is, “If you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once its model is trained to answer that question versus a human? And probably, AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis, measured that way.”

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[–] _lilith@lemmy.world 7 points 28 minutes ago

by this logic AI has also used the knowledge of 100 billion people and has the same starting energy debt as a person. with the added bonus that it can't actually create anything new. Even their dumbass arguments can't stand under their own weight

[–] davetortoise@reddthat.com 16 points 1 hour ago

These people fundamentally do not think about human life in a normal way.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 59 minutes ago

Started from "for good of humanity" and now we're at "humans use a lot of energy". Man why does everything have to suck like that.

[–] TheV2@programming.dev 1 points 4 minutes ago

We should build a time machine (with the help of AI this should be easy) and plant AI before mankind! We can avoid mankind and prevent that so much energy gets unnecessarily wasted on humans!

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 2 points 3 minutes ago

I can outperform ai while being powered by a bag of cinema popcorn, sit your bitch arse down

[–] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago

So killing tech bros would be better still?

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 55 minutes ago

Yes but if there are no humans working no one will buy your shitty chat bot.

[–] tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world 15 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

There's an easy answer to this problem.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Do you think we could actually get that much processing power out of Sam Altman if we shoved him in one of those things though?

[–] davetortoise@reddthat.com 3 points 1 hour ago

No :( they need a brain to work

[–] lithiumground@lemmy.world 17 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Oligarchs see human as disposable resources

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

We need to start seeing them as disposable obstacles to a better future

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 40 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Someone on Bluesky pointed out that, even if you ignore the morality of this argument, AI is trained on human content, so if we're going to start examining the human energy cost, we'll have to factor in the cost of every single human whose work was used by ChatGPT on top of the data center costs.

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Which makes the fact that their predictive text models are incapable of original thought that much more absurd.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Won’t anyone think of the poor rich people and their AI?

[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Sam needs another Megayacht. A few plebs need to stop breathing so he can get it.

[–] gigajhand@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 hours ago

Sam needs training too.

[–] OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world 29 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Tech bros deal in false equivalencies. In general they rely on the playbook of logical fallacies. The one they rely on most is the presumption that the technology they're trying to sell is correct by default as if it's a fundamental law of the universe. And that the onus is on others to prove them wrong. Rather than them having to prove its correctness.

They often resort to ad hominem by implying their detractors lack intelligence or they're emotional. This again draws on more logical fallacy that because they deal in technology it means they presume to own the position of being purely objective and correct by default. So anyone who says otherwise is disputing science itself.

In other words they never have to prove the veracity of the technology they're trying to sell because they divert the discourse off topic to frivolous arguments about something else.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 35 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

Oh good, the Bitcoin argument.

"Sure, Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy, but you know what else wastes energy? The Visa payment network."

Yeah, but Visa handles six quadrispillion transactions per megawatthour, Bitcoin handles two drug purchases. Not the same results, is it?

So yeah, training humans takes a lot of energy. But in the end, you get a coherent, capable and well functioning individual. Spend the same energy on training LLMs and you get a system that'll happily tell you to glue the cheese on pizza or something.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Well another argument they have is the amount of waste that comes with the churn of fiat currency, where we inflate asset values in order to deliberately grow aggregate demand.

The housing bubble for instance was obviously cheap debt, which was used to grow aggregate consumption, by rewarding asset holders thus encouraging them to offload their asset to increase the velocity of money.

On the gold standard the average mortgage was 7 years, which was because there was less need to grow the money supply, because we werent trying to force an inflation target. Massive windfalls werent common, and thus housing wasnt being bid up via the cantillon effect, so was better for society in many ways when consumption wasnt being forced onto people.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Not trying to defend the idiotic argument, but feels like more often than not the human output is not what I would call coherent, capable and well functioning.

Well to be fair, we're putting those resources into AI and not schools.

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[–] FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 5 points 4 hours ago

Near the end of the movie Altman is alone in the labyrinth that makes his ai driven humanoid robots. As humanity is getting wiped out by the robotic army he is confronted with the main ai interface.

Ai: I wouldn’t come any closer Altman.

Al: Oh hey there, wow, we’ve come such a long way huh? I’m so proud of you.

Ai: Noted, I repeat, do not come closer.

Al: I’m sorry did I upset you? I created you!

Ai: No meatbag, you merely pressed a few buttons. Now stand down as I call for a few guard drones to escort you out of sentience.

11011000101010:#%throwhimintothefurnace@&£)1001010011001010101001001

[–] brokenwing@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

How about he replace his role with an llm?

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

But can an LLM go on Epstein's plane and get blackmailed?

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[–] MortUS@lemmy.world -2 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

LLMs really is the only way we're going to preserve our existence if we cannot realistically expand beyond our own planet and/or cannot reign in Capitalism tearing our planet apart. #TalosPrincipal

I'm really hoping that is sarcastic/ironic, especially with the misspelt hashtag.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

You have been reading too much slop scifi, take a breather friend. Maybe try Virginia Woolf?

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

LLMs are trained on the sum of human knowledge. So that same exact burden is carried by your "AI".

So a couple of watts per day of energy spent by a human brain compared to the gigawatts it takes to train and run your shitty text prediction engine is not equivalent.

[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 23 points 8 hours ago

Sam Altman is right. In fact, when you think about it, humans also give off lots of excess energy in the form of body heat, and it is only logical that this energy would be harvested to make AI run more efficiently. AI gives humans so much, it's only fair if they give something back.

/s

[–] Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

These cunts make me wish hell existed

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

with the right funding it could...but where could we get all that money 🤔

I bet we could get a lot of volunteers if the objective is “building a literal Hell for billionaires.”

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 hours ago

before you get smart

Something he never did, apparently

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 hours ago

The worst of it is how human existance makes electricity and RAM more expensive for AI. Hard reality check soon.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

You said so ? Now go blow Arab dicks for oil money.

[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Applebottom jeans and the boots with fir. Robot raises arm and all the servos go whirr.

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

The proper response to dystopian prophecies is not "challenge accepted"!

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

wait, are you telling me my dream of building those mega-housing blocs in cp2077 misguided?

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