@mikerichtaylor
The food was wasted on Sam.
Sentiment breakdown for Sam Altman's tweet on AI energy: Support 10.16%, Confront 58.85%. Shows examples of supportive and confronting replies and engagement.
Sam Altman would like to remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too "Training a human takes 20 years of food." Sam Altman on how much power AI consumes. https://t.co/sZPNdkfgk8
Real-time analysis of public opinion and engagement
What the community is saying — both sides
, so energy-per-skill can look favorable for models.
.
not just electricity.
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users point out that households and local grids bear some of AI’s electricity burden, and some mock claims that polite prompts “cost millions” as tone-deaf.
, with implications for quality and unseen energy costs.
on efficiency and transparency.
many short reactions are jokey or hostile (“rooting for OpenAI’s death” or “I run on 20 watts and anxiety”), underscoring polarized public feelings about AI’s trade-offs.
Replies are full of mockery, contempt and personal attacks, with many users calling his comments “tone-deaf,” “misanthropic,” or “evil,” and ridiculing his appearance and character. A steady stream of jokes (Matrix/batteries, “wasted food on him”) undercuts any attempt at a sober defense.
The technical comparison between “training a model” and “raising a child” sparked sustained criticism about power use and CO2, with many citing figures that show AI training consumes orders of magnitude more energy than a human life and calling the analogy a misleading PR move.
Many replies reject the framing that treats people as economic inputs, arguing that equating children to GPUs is dehumanizing; commenters stress human value, rights and creative contribution as fundamentally different from tuning a tool.
A large subset leans into dystopian images (humans as batteries, Matrix, “replace us”), plus demands to hold Altman and OpenAI accountable — from switching platforms to calls for shutdowns or regulatory scrutiny.
Alongside legitimate technical and ethical critiques, numerous replies include harassment, violent rhetoric and bigoted language; these amplify the thread’s anger but also muddy constructive debate.
A smaller set of replies point out category errors in the analogy and urge a two‑part answer — acknowledge human energy use while also interrogating AI’s concentrated, industrial energy costs — and a few defend AI’s broader potential despite poor phrasing.
Most popular replies, ranked by engagement
The food was wasted on Sam.
Pure psycho take. I cant wait for OpenAI to fail.
sam altman comparing children to GPUs is a new low even for him
Sam Altman comparing AI energy consumption to raising a human child is the most expensive deflection in tech history from a man whose data centers are drinking entire power grids.
Wooho, we are not far from this now
Of course...
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