What happened
Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman defended the energy consumption of artificial intelligence models by comparing it to the 20 years of food and resources required to develop human intelligence. He argued against concentrating AI capabilities within a single company or nation, advocating instead for an iterative deployment strategy that distributes access globally. Altman also identified India as a leading market currently driving worldwide AI adoption.
Why it matters
Framing compute power against human biological costs signals a rhetorical shift in how OpenAI plans to counter environmental pushback. This follows the company's recent push for a transition to nuclear energy to sustain data centre operations. Infrastructure investors and policymakers must recognise that frontier model developers now explicitly treat massive power demands as necessary evolutionary costs rather than correctable inefficiencies. Procurement teams evaluating long-term AI partnerships must assume vendors will prioritise rapid deployment over immediate energy cuts, shifting the burden of managing resource constraints onto regional grids.
Subscribe for Weekly Updates
Stay ahead with our weekly AI and tech briefings, delivered every Tuesday.
