Sam Altman's Lies About ChatGPT Are Growing Bolder
82 comments
·June 12, 2025joegibbs
enqk
The water argument is an easy to destroy distraction to avoid discussing power usage and CO2 emissions.
TheNewsIsHere
Could you cite the source on your claim that a single pistachio farmer uses 130 billion-with-a-b gallons of water a year, please?
Do you mean a particular farm, or “any” farmer in the abstract?
lewispollard
Seems to be referencing this Forbes article, specifically talking about The Wonderful Company:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/11/21/how-m...
TheNewsIsHere
I suspected this was about a singular case. Any typical pistachio farm doesn’t need anywhere near that kind of water.
Here we’d be talking about “the corporate name” in pistachios. That’s a very different thing from what “a” typical pistachio farmer needs. I submit the original comment is cherry-picking to make their argument.
A pistachio tree needs something like (on average) 60 gallons of water a day.
For one 365-day year that is 21,900 gallons/tree/year.
That’s a lot of water, of course. But most farms do not have in excess of 5.39 million pistachio trees (using the 130 billion gallon number).
tim333
The article is a bit weird - says lies are growing bolder, then Altman says "0.000085 gallons of water" per query and then calculates that's 31 million gallons per year. Which is quite a lot of water but doesn't show Altman is lying.
It seems more the author doesn't like Altman and is trying to show he's lying but is not doing a very good job at doing so.
And other bollocks - Altman advocates UBI but knows it won't work and then links an article not showing that. I think the article much more convincingly shows Gizmodo lying than Altman, not that I especially trust the latter.
msgodel
Kind of weird to complain about the number rather than the wastefulness of evaporation cooling.
ben30
The irony is quite striking, just as ChatGPT can generate confident-sounding but inaccurate information, Altman appears to be presenting unsubstantiated claims about his company’s environmental impact. Both involve presenting information without reliable backing, though the consequences differ - one misleads users in conversations, the other potentially misleads stakeholders and the public about environmental responsibility.
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NetRunnerSu
This water debate reminds me of a science fiction project, Chain://Universe. Their latest story, Web://Reflect, explores a future where thinking itself has a resource cost. In that 2090s world, consciousness runs on blockchain ("Mental Smart Chain"), and every cognitive process burns "Gas" (paid in MSCoin). It's a stark look at how tech monopolies could commodify existence, where even basic thought becomes a luxury. The underlying theory (IPWT) offers a fascinating, verifiable take on digital consciousness. Worth a peek if resource allocation in tech futures interests you.
Main repo: https://github.com/dmf-archive/dmf-archive.github.io
IPWT theory: https://github.com/dmf-archive/IPWT
sillyfluke
>It's a stark look at how tech monopolies could commodify existence,
Since you didn't mention it, the latest Black Mirror also covers this (episode 1?). You might like it.
tompccs
The environmental story about AI is extremely boring and I wish it would stop being brought up.
Every technological development since the industrial revolution has increased human demand for energy in some way. It's only the environmental movement, which actively shut down nuclear power plants, which wants human energy consumption to be reduced for cultish reasons.
If we'd ignored anti-nuclear activists in the 70s none of this would be a problem.
oezi
The pro-nuclear cult is certainly irritating. Still stuck on a technology which can't help us much in the current climate predicament (too slow to build, too expensive) and which we repeatedly failed to manage.
The environmental movement isn't in charge. The world community (through mostly democratic elected governments) has decided to reduce emmissions to Net Zero, not energy usage.
benterix
> The pro-nuclear cult is certainly irritating. Still stuck on a technology which can't help us much in the current climate predicament (too slow to build, too expensive) and which we repeatedly failed to manage.
An important point is that while we can and should maximize renewable sources as dominating energy sources, we still need stable backup for fluctuations - for days where there is little wind and little sun. We don't yet have practical energy storage technologies that would allow us to eliminate this problem.
bmicraft
Nuclear is so expensive to build that it has to run 24/7. If you decide to only run it a couple hours a week lighting stacks of cash on fire would be more efficient economically.
It doesn't at all fit into a renewable model where you only sometimes need extra energy. If you want to get a way from gas peaker plants then you have to "over-provision" renewable.
scuderiaseb
The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. What is your solution then, burn coal and oil? Nuclear has a great role to fill the gap reliably.
ViewTrick1002
Have you heard of this thing called batteries?
You know, those that lately achieved the milestone in California of being the largest producer from sundown to midnight in terms of GWh.
What is it with the nuclear cult and this false dichotomy?
Is it because you need to justify spending 10x as much money on new built nuclear power coming online in the 2040s, which is too late to solve anything relevant?
Nuclear power is the worst ”peaker” imaginable.
Lets calculate running Vogtle at a 10-15% capacity factor like a traditional fossil gas peaker.
The electricity now costs $1-1.5/kWh. That is Texas grid meltdown prices. That is what you are yearning for.
oezi
Burn gas in peaker gas plants during those times which are statistically projected to be less than 1 week per year.
theyinwhy
The sun does always shine, at least for the next couple of generations.
hn_throw2025
> too slow to build, too expensive
…and the green movement don’t realise they’re being the useful idiots of the fossil fuel industries, who have been using this attack line for decades because they didn’t want the competition.
If you keep putting off building because it’s “too slow to build”, then guess what - it never gets built.
Would you care to try to reconcile “too expensive” with “you can’t put a price on the planet”?
And nice try with the democratic angle, but the truth more like we have a growing world population with a growing need for abundant, reliable, affordable energy. And yet we’re held hostage by the luxury beliefs of a tiny minority who feel they have a right to govern and want to bask in their perceived virtue.
AnotherGoodName
Too slow to build when you extrapolate growth and cost reductions in solar, wind and batteries which seems very reasonable. As in by the time it’s built it won’t be worth running.
The CSIRO is Australian government funded and did a cost analysis: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Ele...
Tldr nuclear is not worth building anymore. In fact they recommended no other power sources are worth building at this point given solar and winds cost effectiveness and the cost of batteries right now. This doesn't come from a climate angle. It’s pure economics.
funnym0nk3y
Yeah, but the nuclear waste would be a problem. The cost would be a problem too.
I don't get why some people won't get that nuclear is not the solution to the energy problem. Nuclear is one of the most expensive energy sources, and that's without the cost of long term storage of burnt fuel. Without the cost of health issues in mining areas.
The call for energy consumption reduction is not "for cultish reasons", it's because of climate change that's already screwing us.
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WithinReason
Cost of nuclear is high due to low investment.
ViewTrick1002
You do know that nuclear power peaked at almost 20% of the global electricity mix in the 1990s?
How many trillions should we hand out to the nuclear industry to try ”scale”?!?!?
fragmede
why is the cost a problem in and of itself?
funnym0nk3y
Because cost is an incentive to do or not to do things. You know, not everyone can have everything.
lawn
Many environmentalists revert back to criticizing nuclear based on cost but if they really put the environment first that should logically not be a big deal for them.
lawn
It's just the fact that renewables aren't enough (since it's not always windy or sunny) and storage just isn't cheap or plentiful enough. They're great in many ways, but they alone won't provide enough power and stability.
So you're left with water power (which is only applicable in few areas and they destroy the nature), coal/oil/gas (which are much worse for the environment) and nuclear energy.
Nuclear might not solve everything itself either, but it's definitely part of the solution.
funnym0nk3y
Which is a myth. Renewables can in fact supply most requirements if they are coupled with battery storage. Then the price would be cheaper than nuclear still.
Also, natural gas is much much better than coal for the environment. And more responsive too so dark and calm times can be handled as well.
So, why are we not doing it? Lobbyism, lock in, politics, nimby.
energy123
> It's just the fact that renewables aren't enough (since it's not always windy or sunny) and storage just isn't cheap or plentiful enough
Often repeated but untrue. There have been studies that compare the total cost including all storage and transmission requirements and found that nuclear is still much more expensive.
dgb23
„Cultish reasons“?
I agree with you on the technical part. We would likely be in better shape if we advanced more in this area and built more power plants.
But to dismiss environmentalists like this is a bit simplistic.
Remember how long it took for climate change issues to establish in the mainstream?
Corporations and political groups have been fighting and suppressing these issues since the start.
We still don’t have serious discussions about this in large portions of society.
In a more ideal world, nuclear would have been continously integrated and improved to a larger degree. But that would have required for serious discussion in the first place.
elpocko
Using the environmental impact of AI as an argument against AI is ridiculous because AI currently consumes at least an order of magnitude less energy than, say, the computer games industry, which is of no concern apparently.
apeescape
At least some of the anti-nuclear movement back then was directed against old and unsafe nuclear plants, and for good reason. These activists achieved their goal, as modern plants are very safe.
AFAICT, modern day anti-nuclear movement is a bit different to that.
thefz
It's a cost-benefit discussion, should we really boil the oceans so you can show yourself as a Ghibli cartoon to your friends and be relevant for 3 minutes?
wallaBBB
> If we'd ignored anti-nuclear activists in the 70s none of this would be a problem.
Lemmi rephrase this for you: If we ignored anti-nuclear activities funded by big-oil in the 70s this would not be a problem.
Yes! and if we ignored all the destructive FUD surrounding climate change they have been doing for more than 50 years we would be better off.
Furthermore, if we stop ignoring the destruction AI hype is doing to the climate we will be better off.
sharpshadow
Is this a kind of new measurement with the water consumption? The water flows back, gets purified and into the system again. In this case it does not even get dirty. Should it not be just extra energy consumption, to purify the water, instead of it’s own metric?
leoedin
Unfortunately the moment the environment and energy are involved, journalism falls apart. "Water consumption" is a meaningless metric if it 's not accompanied by other information - location, energy intensity of water, source of water, where the water goes next. None of this stuff is ever included.
A mill next to a river "consumes" the water that turns its wheel, but then immediately releases it back into the river. That's very different to a cooling tower that turns that water into vapour and releases it into the air. Which is the data centre doing?
Assuming the data centre isn't actively depleting groundwater, the only important number is how much energy it consumes (including for water related activities). Perhaps also power per unit of compute.
In a lot of places in the world, using water for cooling is likely to be more efficient than an equivalent heat pump - so should be celebrated!
funnym0nk3y
Water usage in humid regions is not a problem (and not nearly as efficient for cooling). Is a problem when consumption gets so high that ground water levels change or fossile ground water is used.
satiated_grue
Look (literally with eyes) at Ashburn on a humid morning. Above the datacenters providing the "cloud" are literal clouds of condensation from the evaporative coolers, and bigger ones at the local power plants providing the electricity.
bob1029
They could be using evaporative cooling towers.
It is entirely possible to run a data center with a minimal fixed amount of water if the cost of power and real estate are not a concern.
Terr_
More often than not, potable water is drawn up and then literally evaporated.
So from the practical perspective of everybody else who happens to need water from the pipe/aquifer/lake/snowmelt, it's "gone" just as much as if it were dumped into the sea.
sharpshadow
Hmm I see. I thought it was tab water running through cooling tubes and back into the sink.
If they actually pump free water from source around their location and release it back how they want to, the points about water consumption are definitely legit.
thefz
You can't really re-circulate the same water or else it needs to be cooled again, and dumping it back will destroy wildlife. Fishes especially are very sensitive to temperature swings in the water.
JimDabell
Is the entire basis of claiming he’s lying the disagreement between his figures and external estimates? It’s pretty bold to dismiss the person who is actually in possession of solid information in favour of external estimates made in the absence of information.
hansmayer
I think it's more about the person's own credibility. It's not the first time he throws out very bold claims, despite being in possession of "solid information", as you say.
n4r9
Let's not forget he was literally fired as CEO on the basis of not being candid to the board, with suggestions that he'd outright lied to them.
diogolsq
Spot check:
"OpenAI has claimed that as of December 2025, ChatGPT has 300 million weekly active users generating 1 billion messages per day. "
**should be December of 2024 **, my brain bugged there.
n4r9
> He suggests we ignore the warming planet because AI will solve that niggling issue in due course.
Bloody hell. Does he really? If so that perfectly encapsulates what scares me about his approach.
noduerme
This is the old made new again. History is cluttered with hucksters who sold some product they hyped as being good for humanity.
When you get right down to it, there's a lot of stuff you can do that's good for yourself that isn't necessarily good for everyone else, and/or has unpredictable side effects and external costs. Good people don't do those things without figuring out the risks and minimizing the damage. Bad people do them for the money and then try to justify them afterwards.
Are "good" and "bad" too reductive? Substitute your own phrasing for your own moral code. I think most people inherently understand what is right and wrong - and some people choose to do what's wrong.
This framework makes it exceptionally easy to see who is a good or bad person.
Musk wants to colonize Mars not for humanity, but for the continuation of his own genetic line. Hence, Martian citizens won't argue amongst themselves (he thinks). (Stupidly). Altman is the same type of hedonistic, narcissistic monster who would leave humanity behind. Their motto is "après moi le déluge".
dgb23
The article is quite aggressive. I think that comes from a general frustration that I share with the author.
It feels like people (in power) increasingly get away with bullshit. Whether it‘s straight up dishonesty, groupthink or ideological, is besides the point. The bigger issue is that it repeatedly drags down discourse and makes it way too hard to solve problems.
And we have problems. We‘re facing some of the greatest challenges humans have ever faced. But we continously have to fight self-imposed distractions.
hansmayer
> The article is quite aggressive. I think that comes from a general frustration that I share with the author.
Honestly, it's quite refreshing to see some honest reporting beginning to surface in the general media. And the problem is, this sort of getting away with bullshit then trickles down and sort of impacts the society as a whole, as the lower echelons begin to emulate such behaviour.
bagacrap
Rather than getting away with it, people gain power through bullshit.
Sam seems to model himself after Elon, the most effective bs artist out there (even if you or I don't fall for it, humanity collectively has decided to hand him the greatest amount of capital for a pretty modest amount of actual economic impact).
rendall
This media frenzy has the same structure as the crypto panic from a year or two ago:
Step 1: New tech emerges and grows fast.
Step 2: Media fixates on energy use or resource costs, often with shaky math or cherry-picked comparisons.
Step 3: Worst-case assumptions are broadcast as certainty.
Step 4: Tech becomes politicized and moralized. Energy use framed as inherently unethical rather than context-dependent.
Gizmodo calling Altman’s numbers “lies” fits this pattern. Maybe he’s lowballing. But framing it like environmental villainy rather than corporate spin or PR vagueness turns it into another purity test. Same thing happened with Bitcoin, and later it turned out the real story was more nuanced (e.g., surplus energy, shift to PoS, geographic concentration, etc.).
It’s another round of the same playbook.
The water argument is way overblown. Even based on the worst figures from the article "OpenAI’s older model would be using 31 million liters of water per day, or 8.18 million gallons" - this is 2 billion gallons of water per year. A single Californian pistachio grower uses 130 billion gallons a year, likely more than the entire AI industry, for quite a niche crop. Don't even think about the water usage of staples like cotton or beef.
Also, before the AI boom there were still huge numbers of GPUs using the same water and power that AI was using to run things like Netflix and YouTube (not exactly vital for human existence) - and still are - yet AI is treated like unique sin against the environment.