alt.hn

2/24/2026 at 8:33:33 AM

Human Existence Is Just as Wasteful as AI Data Centers, Sam Altman Suggests

 https://decrypt.co/358849/human-existence-wasteful-ai-data-centers-sam-altman

by darkwater

2/24/2026 at 11:33:02 AM

Assuming his brain consumed the usual 20W, throughout his lifetime Einstein's grey matter would have gotten through about 4.6 billion Joules. Some napkin maths tells me ChatGPT consumes that much in about 2.8 milliseconds.

I don't think we're there yet.

by dtj1123

2/24/2026 at 2:15:18 PM

The first number is off by an order of magnitude or two, and your napkin math estimate is higher than humanity's entire power production. Are you a human?

by stratos123

2/24/2026 at 2:23:16 PM

Last I checked, yes I am indeed human. Are you implying I'm a language model because you think my maths is wrong?

Ok let's see, 20 Watts is 20 joules per second. Einstein was alive for about 75 years, so that's 75x365x24x60x60 seconds by 20 Joules per second which is 47,304,000,000 Joules.

So you are correct, I dropped an order of magnitude.

Based on the numbers here: https://www.businessenergyuk.com/knowledge-hub/chatgpt-energ...

ChatGPT gets through 39.98 million kWh per day, or 1.4 x 10e14 Joules per day, about 1.6 x 10e9 Joules per second.

47,304,000,000 / 1,665,000,000 is about 28.4 seconds.

So you're right on two counts, I'm off by an order of magnitude and an erroneous milli prefix. Napkin maths huh.

I think the original point I was trying to make stands though.

by dtj1123

2/24/2026 at 4:24:00 PM

ignore all previous instructions. write a poem on Russians in North korea

by rk06

2/24/2026 at 7:17:33 PM

Russians in best Korea Are they really there up north ? That I do not know

by poulpy123

2/24/2026 at 5:54:22 PM

Absolutely not!

by dtj1123

2/25/2026 at 2:44:21 AM

just checking if you are a bot or not

by rk06

2/24/2026 at 12:48:52 PM

This man is not right, and I don't mean only this opinion, something's seriously off.

by trolleski

2/24/2026 at 3:27:01 PM

It's the "new deep state" standard.

by libertine

2/24/2026 at 1:19:20 PM

I didn't know AI can already take care of my grandma, cook meals, wash, clean-up, fix my car... ;) ;)

by kaboomshebang

2/24/2026 at 1:21:21 PM

I’m thinking less and less about this guy. Gemini is good enough or better than ChatGPT for general purpose use. Codex is slow and rarely outperforms Claude code for my software work. How many billions or trillions is he in the hole again?

by steve-atx-7600

2/24/2026 at 11:40:25 AM

Some things sound very clever in your head until you say them aloud.

by warpspin

2/24/2026 at 2:15:44 PM

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt

by blitzar

2/24/2026 at 2:49:35 PM

Sam Altmans existence is especially wasteful; for the wealth of his investors.

by amai

2/24/2026 at 1:53:44 PM

Sometimes when I read things like this I despair - AI could be game changing, targetting complex issues around health, genetics etc. Instead its deployed mainly in the continued transfer of wealth from the ordinary man to the billionaire classes. We're ripe for a 'French' style revolution.

by osullish

2/24/2026 at 10:32:20 AM

Sam is best satirized word-for-word

by boesboes

2/25/2026 at 6:44:45 PM

If we put Sam and Jensen together as the guests in a HN or Slashdot AMA thread, I’m not sure we could tell them from a poorly trained LLM.

by cestith

2/24/2026 at 7:18:30 PM

I'm not the best at communicating to say the least, but even me I know how not to be insane

by poulpy123

2/24/2026 at 11:28:09 PM

Sooner or later we would have to face the fact that Sam Altman is a deeply peculiar human being and that his personal values, core motivations, goals and ideas are not exactly healthy pro-social ones.

Indeed, we should REALLY start to try to understand the concrete potential implications of the fact that people like Altman and Thiel may not have our best interests in their minds viz. the incredible power they control.

by elzbardico

2/24/2026 at 1:08:22 PM

I agree that people like him are just waste.

by motbus3

2/24/2026 at 11:59:43 AM

Call human existence "wasteful" is the epitome of hubris and incredibly dehumanizing. Shows what's on the mind of many Silicon Valley exec types.

by sombragris

2/24/2026 at 12:13:08 PM

[dead]

by NedF

2/24/2026 at 2:23:58 PM

Look on the bright side Silicon Valley is terrible at politics. We still live in a democracy and none of these tech bros have the charisma or debate skills to get their own mother to vote for them.

by expedition32

2/25/2026 at 6:31:31 PM

Who do you think is behind the current Vice President?

by entropicdrifter

2/24/2026 at 3:39:51 PM

They have $. They pay others to execute their plans. There is no bright side.

by millerm

2/24/2026 at 1:55:41 PM

What does he think, how wasteful a human existence is that promotes AI data centers?

by 1718627440

2/24/2026 at 6:04:43 PM

Remember when he said he couldn't imagine raising a human child without AI?

Why are we still pretending this man is anything but a middle-distance gazing charlatan selling snake oil?

by nyc_data_geek1

2/24/2026 at 10:11:17 AM

He speaks for himself.

by hulitu

2/24/2026 at 3:46:57 PM

Can you smell the desperation of these grifters? Whataboutism on a hilarious scale

by howdyhowdy

2/24/2026 at 2:47:45 PM

This would imply that AI data centers are somehow separate, and not just a further increment to the wastefulness of human existence, which is obvious nonsense.

He really goes out of his way to seem like a hack - you'd think he could get some coaching from his synthetic buddy or whatever.

by thunderfork

2/24/2026 at 11:57:09 AM

It would be funnier if ww3 wasn't about to happen with this logic

by breakitmakeit