United Kingdom, Feb. 23 -- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has defended the amount of resources required for artificial intelligence.

Fears have been expressed about the amount of energy consumed by AI but Altman suggests that this is "unfair" as it also takes a lot of energy to train human beings.

Altman said: "One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is 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 the food you eat before that time, before you get smart."

He added: "The fair comparison is if you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once a model is trained to answer that question, versus a human, ...