OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express.
For one thing, Altman — who was in India for a major AI summit — said concerns about AI’s water usage are “totally fake,” though he acknowledged it was a real issue when “we used to do evaporative cooling in data centers.”
“Now that we don’t do that, you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality.”
He added that it’s “fair” to be concerned about “the energy consumption — not per query, but in total, because the world is now using so much AI.” In his view, this means the world needs to “move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”
There’s no legal requirement for tech companies to disclose how much energy and water they use, so scientists have been trying to study it independently. Data centers have also been connected to rising electricity prices.
Citing a previous conversation with Bill Gates, the interviewer asked whether it’s accurate to say a single ChatGPT query currently uses the equivalent of 1.5 iPhone battery charges, to which Altman replied, “There’s no way it’s anything close to that much.”
Altman also complained that many discussions about ChatGPT’s energy usage are “unfair,” especially when they focus on “how much energy it takes to train an AI model, relative to how much it costs a human to do one inference query.”
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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.”
You can watch the full interview below. The conversation about water and energy usage begins at around 26:35.
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![Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End
There’s many uncertainties in this world, but apparently the future of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may not be one of them. According to a source speaking to The Ankler’s Lesley Goldberg, the show’s considered a “magical halo” by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. As such, it’s “proteced for its run” and likely to finish out the five-season arc Amazon pitched back when it first secured the rights. Getting those rights and making the show has been pretty pricey for the company, and the first two seasons had a two-year release gap. At time of writing, the show’s third season doesn’t have a firm date beyond “sometime in 2026,” and some have generally wondered how much more life Rings of Power had left in it. Goldberg’s report also mentions a tradeoff to this five-season plan: for Rings of Power to live on, a spinoff that’d been planned for it has gotten axed. Major Prime Video shows like The Boys and Invincible have become small franchises unto themselves, and it makes sense the streamer would want to repeat that for its remaining big fantasy series. While Amazon may not get to build on Middle-earth after the show ends, Warner Bros. is determined to keep the Lord of the Rings train going with two new films: a Gollum prequel, and an interquel that also reunites the Hobbits after the events of Return of the King. [via IGN] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Amazon #Sticking #Rings #PowerJ.R.R. Tolkien,Lord of the Rings,Rings of Power Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End
There’s many uncertainties in this world, but apparently the future of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may not be one of them. According to a source speaking to The Ankler’s Lesley Goldberg, the show’s considered a “magical halo” by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. As such, it’s “proteced for its run” and likely to finish out the five-season arc Amazon pitched back when it first secured the rights. Getting those rights and making the show has been pretty pricey for the company, and the first two seasons had a two-year release gap. At time of writing, the show’s third season doesn’t have a firm date beyond “sometime in 2026,” and some have generally wondered how much more life Rings of Power had left in it. Goldberg’s report also mentions a tradeoff to this five-season plan: for Rings of Power to live on, a spinoff that’d been planned for it has gotten axed. Major Prime Video shows like The Boys and Invincible have become small franchises unto themselves, and it makes sense the streamer would want to repeat that for its remaining big fantasy series. While Amazon may not get to build on Middle-earth after the show ends, Warner Bros. is determined to keep the Lord of the Rings train going with two new films: a Gollum prequel, and an interquel that also reunites the Hobbits after the events of Return of the King. [via IGN] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Amazon #Sticking #Rings #PowerJ.R.R. Tolkien,Lord of the Rings,Rings of Power](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/04/lotr-rings-of-power-hed-1280x853.jpg)




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