From Complex:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went to bat for AI’s energy cost with an interesting comparison: raising a human. In an interview with Anant Goenka from Express Adda, Altman acknowledged the amount of energy it takes to run AI, a common criticism as its popularity grows.
”People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model relative to how much it takes a human to do one inference inquiry,” Altman said. 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.” He further goes on to say AI has “probably caught up” energy efficiency-wise. He did not provide a citation.