Sam Altman says concern about AI water usage is a “meme” that doesn’t actually hold any water.
The OpenAI CEO was asked to respond to resistance to AI, including concerns about water consumption, on the premiere episode of the Sources podcast with Alex Heath, published Tuesday.
Altman said that while they have a reputation for being water guzzlers, modern data centers use about as much water as an office building.
“That has been a robust meme and difficult to disprove, but I don’t think holds up to any scrutiny,” he said.
A 2024 report from a state government commission in Virginia — a hot spot for data centers — found that while some facilities used significantly more water than others, most data centers used the same amount or less than an average large office building.
Water consumption has been a central concern in the backlash against data centers. A Gallup report published in May found 71% of Americans said they opposed the construction of a data center in their area, with 70% saying they worried specifically about the environmental impact. Half of the respondents cited the effect on resources, with 18% naming water specifically.
A Business Insider investigation published last year found data centers were contributing to the water crisis in the West, in part because of water-intensive evaporative cooling techniques.
The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, says data center developers use various cooling methods, including some closed-loop or waterless systems, and that they prioritize efficient water practices that account for local water availability.
Altman also compared the water used by ChatGPT to that used in growing California almonds, a water-intensive crop. He said growing a single almond in California requires more water than is used in thousands of ChatGPT queries, adding “the people that are scarfing down 12 almonds at a time don’t feel like they’re doing something horrible from a water perspective, for the most part.”
Business Insider could not independently verify Altman’s comparison, but the claim that water consumption from growing a single almond is orders of magnitude higher than an AI chatbot prompt generally lines up with available figures. Altman has said the average ChatGPT query uses about 0.32 milliliters of water, while Google has said the average Gemini app text prompt uses 0.26 milliliters. A 2019 study by researchers affiliated with the US Geological Survey found that growing a single almond in California requires an average of 3.56 liters, a little less than a gallon of water per nut.
While he said the water concerns around AI are overblown, he said he thinks it’s up to the industry to change the public’s minds.
“I think the right way to get people to like something is to deliver them value,” Altman said, adding, “The industry has got work to do in terms of how we make these products easy to use and easy for people to get a lot of value out of.”
