Sam Altman says currently “the idea of putting data centers in space is ridiculous” and that it is “not something that's going to matter at scale this decade”

Once allies at OpenAI, Sam Altman and Elon Musk are now sharply divided over the future of AI infrastructure.

The Indian Express 2026-02-22 Bijin Jose

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@businessinsider.com @businessinsider.com on bluesky
While in New Delhi on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “there will come a time” for orbital data centers, but it won't be anytime soon.
@karlbode.com Karl Bode on bluesky
I like how Sam Altman always tries very hard to pretend he's somehow outside of the corporate behaviors he's criticizing, in some weird bid to get credibility he doesn't have
@mikeelgan Mike Elgan on bluesky
For the first time ever, Sam Altman says something in public I actually agree with. gizmodo.com/sam-altman-s...
@annaciaunica @annaciaunica on x
Looks like our paper with @erikjbekkers is more timely than ever ! If you had to chose between unplugging an AI claiming it's conscious and or a pre-term incubator - which one would you choose ? https://arxiv.org/... [image]
@rosiegray Rosie Gray on x
Are the AI people trying on purpose to come across as completely sinister
@david_fairchild L. David Fairchild on x
He's not just defending AI energy use. He is smuggling in a whole anthropology where humans are basically inefficient meat computers that you have to pour food and years into before they become useful. And once you accept that, the next move is obvious. If people are just costly
@kapoorkkunal Kunal Kapoor on x
I'm very pro tech and his intent here is to talk about energy, but you can see why people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the tech bros. It reflects a broader discomfort in how they frame humanity. Culturally, some of this language starts to echo the archetype of
@sketchesbyboze @sketchesbyboze on x
You need to understand that Silicon Valley is increasingly being run by creepy, dead-eyed men who hate families, who hate kids, who have no respect for life, who would like to see much of humanity dead or enslaved. It's our job to defeat the dystopia they're so eager to build.
@heyaimsarah Sarah on x
America's treasure is her natural resources. These untouched lands that belong to us, the public. Don't let them trade this for a bunch of fucking data centers [image]
@nomads4pritzker @nomads4pritzker on x
Famously, human learning takes *very little* energy. A toddler learns thousands of words and an entire grammar while eating nothing but raspberries, before learning to read. An LLM needs a nuclear reactor and the entire internet as a training corpus.
@aakashgupta Aakash Gupta on x
A human consumes about 2,000 calories per day. Over 20 years, that's roughly 17,000 kWh of total food energy. Training GPT-4 consumed an estimated 50 GWh of electricity. That's 3,000 humans worth of “training energy” for a single model run. And GPT-4 is already dead. OpenAI
@seanilling Sean Illing on x
I simply cannot express how passionately I dislike these people
@boringbiz_ @boringbiz_ on x
I honestly think the reason we see so much main street pushback against AI is because of how the leaders of the largest companies in the space have framed the technology If they had just said they were building cool technology that helps people be more productive, it would be
@davidbessis David Bessis on x
Why does Sam insist on declaring war against his entire customer base? That's a truly bizarre positioning for a mainstream business.
@melatkirosco @melatkirosco on x
This is how disposable we are to the billionaires developing AI. That's why I'm calling for regulations on AI and the data centers that are straining our energy grids. There's too much at stake with this technology, and we need to make sure AI benefits us all, not just the few.
@arzandc Arzan Tarapore on x
This is why we need philosophers, not only coding nerds.
@samhaselby Sam Haselby on x
This is how industrial agriculture talks about livestock.
@tompark1n Tom Parkin on x
Humans are a waste of life and food energy, says AI billionaire
@kortizart Karla Ortiz on x
This is: 1. BS from a snake oil salesman 2. Psychotic 3. A position based on so much disdain for you and your future. Their proposal is to take everything away from you: opportunities, livelihoods, environment. We gotta legally rein in these people and their companies asap
@mmitchell_ai @mmitchell_ai on x
A problem, it seems to me, is that many people don't see or experience people's humanity. #NotAllPeople. If you don't experience others' humanity, then reducing them to computer-like processing is completely sensible. 1/
@brianbeutler Brian Beutler on x
Psychotic.
@realbalajee @realbalajee on x
Sam is simply rebutting a common argument made against the efficiency of AI models. While I don't think he is right because humans have a higher capacity to learn / become more efficient over time than a trained AI models, I find the moral pearl clutching to be quite dumb.
@toadsanime Ryan T. Brown on x
This is an evil, warped worldview from an evil, warped man who has lost his humanity and doesn't see people as any different to machines with a work/financial purpose. We are inefficient tools to the inhuman cretin. He can't be fixed. The world is worse for his existence.
@koylanai @koylanai on x
I build AI for a living. I believe in what we're building. But this kind of rhetoric makes my work harder and more dangerous. @sama, comparing human development to model training is tone-deaf, strategically reckless. People are losing jobs. They're getting angry. They're
@svembu Sridhar Vembu on x
I do not want to see a world where we equate a piece of technology to a human being. I work hard as a technologist to see a world where we don't allow technology to dominate our lives, instead it should quietly recede into the background.
@bigblackjacobin Edward Ongweso Jr on x
we can write a million essays about how the future Silicon Valley wants to build is underwritten by a deep disgust with / contempt for Being A Human, or we can just let them speak for themselves
@framesofnick Nick on x
This is the talk of a traitor to the human race
@alexbores Alex Bores on x
Computer scientist and new dad here. I'm raising a child because that's the joy of life. I'm running for Congress because my son—all of our kids—deserve AI that enriches their lives and works for them, not against them. Altman's mission seems to be unfettered AI at all of our
@gmiller Geoffrey Miller on x
Conservatives need to understand that the AI industry's foundational ideology is contempt for humans, and the total confidence that they can replace humans with entities that are more ‘efficient’. If you support that, you're not a ‘conservative’ in any meaningful way.
@rob_flaherty Rob Flaherty on x
One of the fundamental problems with “just let the AI guys do whatever they want” is that the AI guys seem to have never interacted with a real person in their entire lives https://x.com/...
@topherspiro Topher Spiro on x
These people need to be regulated.
@xriskology Dr. Émile P. Torres on x
“To train a human.” Altman has previously said that people are nothing more than “stochastic parrots.” He holds a profound dehumanizing view of our species.
@matthewstoller Matt Stoller on x
He's saying a really big spreadsheet and a baby are morally equivalent. One reason to believe that life is divine is so that you don't allow sociopaths like this anywhere near anything important.
@christosargyrop @christosargyrop on x
Let's fact check Sammie here. 25 years x 365 days = 9,125 days Caloric needs vary by age; let's assume 2500 on average ~ 23M calories ~ 27 kilowatt-hours to raise a human. A gaming GPU is about 0.4 watts/hr. So playing games for 3 days straight consumes more energy than raising
@tanya_sabrinaaa Tanya on x
we should stop feeding children so we can feed data centers
@mollysoshea Molly O'Shea on x
Yes, Sam — but brains are far more energy efficient than computers. Brain: 20 watts AI: gigawatts Biology wins. Naveen Rao (@NaveenGRao) CEO, @unconvAI Konstantine Buhler (@Konstantine) Partner, @sequoia TLDR: Biology currently delivers far more general intelligence per [video]
@motorhueso Eugenio Tisselli on x
I don't know how much energy was used to train Altman, but it clearly was a huge waste.
@snmrrw Sean Morrow on x
He's danced around this before, but this seems like the most direct admission that he's anti-humanity, a traitor against us all who should be treated as such.
@charlottealter Charlotte Alter on x
there is something so fundamentally gross abt this
@shauseth Shaurya on x
calling humans meat computers that eat too much food was a completely optional way to address the issue btw
@alex_peys Alex Peysakhovich on x
~3000 calories per day = 22m calories in 20 years =~ 25k kw - assume 10x inefficiency in production = 250k kw ~ assume 10 kw per hour to run a 8x H100 machine = 25k*8 = 200k gpu hours llama3 8b took 1.3m gpu hours (~6 people), 405b took 31m (~150 people) this doesn't count all
@tcarmody Tim Carmody on bluesky
He really thought he had a winner with this one. “Check and mate!” [embedded post]
@fatraccoon @fatraccoon on bluesky
Man with above average intelligence easily steps into logical fallacy trap. — “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...” — techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/…
@jfarkas Johan Farkas on bluesky
When tech companies anthropomorphize AI, they also dehumanise people. Case in point: Sam Altman just said that we shouldn't worry about the climate impact of AI because humans eat food. — techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/s...
@seanokane Sean O'Kane on bluesky
My god this is genuinely one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard — techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/s...
@obyrska Olga Byrska on bluesky
Meanwhile, in our dystopia: “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. It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart.” Sam Altman
@harfenist Ethan Harfenshvitz on bluesky
Being confident enough to say something this ghoulish to an audience should automatically get you investigated for potentially abusing employees. — This dude clearly doesn't value human life and looks at the rest of us as meat for his grinder
@Edelruth@mastodon.online @Edelruth@mastodon.online on mastodon
@Techmeme — Another anthropomorphization of the LLM: now it is ‘raised’, and comparable to a child.
@gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green Gerry McGovern on mastodon
Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too — 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.…
r/behindthebastards r on reddit
Sam Altman would like to remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too
r/BetterOffline r on reddit
Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too
r/technology r on reddit
Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too

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Sam Altman says currently “the idea of putting data centers in space is ridiculous” and that it is “not something that's going to matter at scale this decade”

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