OpenAI CEO: AI not to blame for layoffs, blasts ‘insane’ data centre water concerns

Numerous technology giants, including Salesforce, Meta and Amazon have announced job cuts this year, affecting hundreds of workers globally.

Although some companies claim they are not replacing workers with AI, the tool has still been mentioned in explanations for these layoffs. However, Altman suggested that AI may be used as a cover for some job cuts that companies were already planning to make.

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” Altman told CNBC-TV18 at the India AI Impact summit.

He also added that he expects “more of the latter over time,” as AI replaces more jobs.

“We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” Altman continued. “But, I would expect that the real impact of AI doing jobs in the next few years will begin to be palpable.”

At the same summit, Altman also addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact.

As a result, he dismissed worries about data centres’ water use as “fake” and compared AI’s energy demands to those of humans.

Altman made the comments during an interview with The Indian Express at India AI Impact summit, where he rejected claims suggesting ChatGPT consumes gallons of water per prompt, calling them “completely untrue, totally insane” and saying they have “no connection to reality.”

Altman added that water concerns are overstated, while acknowledging that overall energy use remains a legitimate issue.

“Not per query, but in total – because the world is using so much AI and we need to move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly,” CNBC stated.

“One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is 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,” he said. “It takes like 20 years of life, and all the food you eat before that time, before you get smart.”

“The fair comparison is if you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once a 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,” he added.

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