4 ms·
It's difficult to really compare. One particular example would be generating an image of a cloud. There are billions of such images in existence, but you could
by endisneigh 3y ago
It's difficult to really compare.
One particular example would be generating an image of a cloud. There are billions of such images in existence, but you could also use a model to generate one, which would take several orders of magnitude more energy than just using your search engine of choice to find one of the billions.
In general though, people tend to reach for convenience so I expect the energy usage to increase rather than decrease due to the demand created by the "ease" of AI.
On the other hand, if humanity because productive such that we "solve" energy than the point ends up being moot, since any energy increase will be offset by the invention of nuclear cold fusion, or other such things.
- szundi 3y agoSo far google is faster than DALL-E for example, we are saved - for now
- endisneigh 3y agoIt's not really about the speed of getting something, rather energy necessary. Inherently searching for discrete things that are already indexed properly (a large one time cost) will always be faster than inferencing a XXB parameter model. There are contrived examples one could conjure where using AI is slower but ultimately uses less energy than due to the complexity involved, since searching is well, searching preexisting things. If you need something new and you're not good at searching it might require less time and compute in the end to just ask a model than potentially wasting days, weeks or years flailing about.
- freedomben 3y agoIt depends on what you need the image for. If you just want to see what a cloud looks like, then yes Google is far faster. If you need to find an image that isn't encumbered by copyright that you can use for your presentation or blog post, it is much slower.