> 2. He is trying to rebut a _specific_ argument against his product, that it takes even more energy to do a task than a human does, once its training is priced in. He thinks that this is a fair comparison. The _fact_ that he thinks that this is a fair comparison is why I think it is too generous to say that this is just an offhand comment. Putting an LLM on an equal footing with a human, as if an LLM should have the same rights to the Earth as we do, is anti-human.
> It also contains a rather glaring logical flaw that I would hope someone as intelligent as Altman should see. The human will be here anyway.
Exactly. Perhaps in Altman's world, a human exists specifically to do tasks for him. But in reality, that human was always going to exist and was going to use those 20 years of energy anyway; they only happened to be employed by his rich ass when he wanted them to do a task. It's not equivalent to burning energy on training an LLM to do that task.
> It also contains a rather glaring logical flaw that I would hope someone as intelligent as Altman should see. The human will be here anyway.
Exactly. Perhaps in Altman's world, a human exists specifically to do tasks for him. But in reality, that human was always going to exist and was going to use those 20 years of energy anyway; they only happened to be employed by his rich ass when he wanted them to do a task. It's not equivalent to burning energy on training an LLM to do that task.