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This is such a strange metric. When light bulbs were first invented, they also used more electricity than entire countries. So what? All that means is countries
by solardev 3y ago
This is such a strange metric. When light bulbs were first invented, they also used more electricity than entire countries. So what? All that means is countries have very different levels of energy consumption.
According to Wikipedia, China uses 118,000 times more energy than, say, Nauru. Okay, and?
Is A.I. doing useful work in exchange? Absolutely, especially when compared to crypto. On a per output basis it's probably also more energy efficient than human writers and artists who wastefully metabolize cow products.
I don't know that we should be measuring productivity on an output per watt-hour basis to begin with, but if we did, we should at least put it in context.
Training an AI costs 40 home-years worth of energy... that's it?! How is that even newsworthy? The value AI gives us, now and in the future, is way way greater than a random selection of 40 households. Energy well spent.
If we truly cared about energy efficiency, human metabolism is incredibly inefficient. Do we really want to go down the path of comparing algorithms versus biological power usage? It's not going to look pretty for us.
Put another way, if ChatGpt uses 500 MWh a day, that's about a quarter tank of single 747's fuel. It's not even a rounding error.
Is it worth it? Probably. Is it significant? I'd say no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_primary_energy_consumption_and_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri...
- colordrops 3y ago> This is such a strange metric. This metric has been used for years by dstractors of cryptocurrency for years without anyone batting an eye.
- quickthrower2 3y agoA small country to power something that you can run on a Raspberry Pi using sqlite is another level ;-). All because there is no one you can trust.
- solardev 3y agoBecause crypto produced nothing of value. AI does.
- KirillPanov 3y ago[flagged]
- solardev 3y agoHeh, unfortunately too true.
- etrautmann 3y agoI think people here are open to reasonable examples of the utility of crypto
- mrb 3y agoStrange metric indeed. "As much as a small country" is about as useful as saying "as big as a small rock".
- beepbooptheory 3y agoI think its somewhat settled these days that people should be able to eat even if they are not productive, right? Like, wouldn't all the artists and writers still need to inefficiently metabolize things, even if out of a job?
- solardev 3y agoYes, and that's part of why I don't think we should measure productivity on a output per watt hours basis. Humans are terrible at S3 standby.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoWhat do you think would be better? How many LSAT question's answered per hour?
- solardev 3y agoIf it were up to me, cat memes per BTU?