First-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.

one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

  • El Barto
    2•10 months ago

    Nice! I knew my math was off by three zeros somewhere, but it was late at night, and the exercise per se was fun enough so I wrapped it up.

    Your corrections make everything make more sense, at least on the brain side. Considering the 2000 calories per day recommendation for the whole body, which is 83 cals per hour, the brain consuming 17.2 cals, or 20% of it sounds about right - though from another point of view, 20% consumption of the whole energy intake sounds like a lot! The brain weighs about 3 lbs, so in an adult male weighing 190 lbs, that’s roughly 1.5%.

    1.5% of the “cell population” consumes 20% of the total energy. That’s some Occupy Wall Street stuff right there!

    And bringing it back to bagels, 17.2 cals represents less than 10% of a bagel. So, a bagel bite. The brain consumes a bagel bite per hour. Which is wild given how complex it is (at least, complex to us.)

    Finally, I said “at least on the brain side” because a household requiring just 3.6 bagels per hour sounds quite low. You mean to tell me that if I burn 4 bagels, I can power my TV, my fridge and my AC for a full hour? Now I know what to do with expired bagels!!!

    Anyway. Thanks for humoring me! Awesome exercise and awesome discussion. It was fun!