5 ms·

Using your brain is so vastly more energy efficient, we might just only need half of that 30 GW capacity if fewer people had these leftpad-style knee-jerk react

by 9dev 9mo ago

Using your brain is so vastly more energy efficient, we might just only need half of that 30 GW capacity if fewer people had these leftpad-style knee-jerk reactions.

wongarsu 9mo ago
Each person uses about 100W (2000kcal/24h=96W). Running all of humanity takes about 775GW. Sure, using or not using your brain is a negligible energy difference, so if you aren't using it you really should, for energy efficiency's sake. But I don't think the claim that our brains are more energy efficient is obviously true on its own. The issue is more about induced demand from having all this external "thinking" capacity on your fingertips
- program_whiz 9mo ago
  Is there an AI system with functionality at or equal to a human brain that operates on less than 100W? Its currently the most efficient model we have. You compare all of humanity's energy expenditure, but to make the comparison, you need to consider the cost of replicating all that compute with AI (assuming we had an AGI at human level in all regards, or a set of AIs that when operated together could replace all human intelligence).
  - tlb 9mo ago
    No one will ever agree on when AI systems have equivalent functionality to a human brain. But lots of jobs consist of things a computer can now do for less than 100W. Also, while a body itself uses only 100W, a normal urban lifestyle uses a few thousand watts for heat, light, cooking, and transportation.
    - 9dev 9mo ago
      > Also, while a body itself uses only 100W, a normal urban lifestyle uses a few thousand watts for heat, light, cooking, and transportation. Add to that the tier-n dependencies this urban lifestyle has—massive supply chains sprawling across the planet, for example involving thousands upon thousands of people and goods involved in making your morning coffee happen.
      - wongarsu 9mo ago
        Wikipedia quoted global primary energy production at 19.6 TW, or about 2400W/person. Which is obviously not even close to equally distributed. Per-country it gets complicated quickly, but naively taking the total from [1] brings the US to 9kW per person. And that's ignoring sources like food from agriculture, including the food we feed our food. To be fair, AI servers also use a lot more energy than their raw power demand if we use the same metrics. But after accounting for everything, an American and an 8xH100 server might end up in about the same ballpark Which is not meant as an argument for replacing Americans with AI servers, but it puts AI power demand into context https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
  - wongarsu 9mo ago
    Obviously we don't have AGI so we can't compare many tasks. But on tasks where AI does perform at comparable levels (certain subsets of writing, greenfield coding and art) it performs fairly well. They use more power but are also much faster, and that about cancels out. There are plenty of studies that try to put numbers on the exact tradeoff, usually focused more on CO2. Plenty that find AI better by some absurd degree (800 times more efficient at 3d modelling, 130 to 1500 times more efficient at writing, or 300 to 3000 times more efficient at illustrating [1]). The one I'd trust the most is [2] where GPT4 was 5-19 times less CO2 efficient than humans at solving coding challenges 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x?fromPaywallRec=false https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x?fromPaywa... 2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24658-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24658-5
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    >all human intelligence So, this is rather complex because you can turn AI energy usage to nearly zero when not in use. Humans have this problem of needing to consume a large amount of resources for 18-24 years with very little useful output during that time, and have to be kept running 24/7 otherwise you lose your investment. And even then there is a lot of risk they are going to be gibbering idiots and represent a net loss of your resource expenditure. For this I have a modern Modest Proposal they we use young children as feed stock for biofuel generation before they become a resource sink. Not only do you save the child from a life of being a wage slave, you can now power your AI data center. I propose we call this the Matrix Efficiency Saving System (MESS).
  - Aerroon 9mo ago
    >Is there an AI system with functionality at or equal to a human brain that operates on less than 100W? Obviously not equal to a human brain, but my GPU takes about 150W and can draw an image in a minute that would take me forever to replicate.
- Majromax 9mo ago
  I did some math for this particular case by asking Google’s Gemini Pro 3 (via AI studio) to evaluate the press release. Nvidia has since edited the release to remove the “tons of copper” claim, but it evaluated the other numbers at a reported API cost of about 3.8 cents. If the stated pricing just recovers energy cost, that implies 1500kJ of energy as a maximum (less if other costs are recovered in the pricing). A human thinking for 10 minutes would use sbout 6kJ of direct energy. I agree with your point about induced demand. The “win” wouldn’t be looking at a single press release with already-suspect numbers, but rather looking at essentially all press releases of note, a task not generally valuable enough to devote people towards. That being said, we normally consider it progress when we can use mechanical or electrical energy to replace or augment human work.
blueg3 9mo ago
A Gemini query uses about a kilojoule. The brain runs at 20 W (though the whole human costs 100 W). So, the human is less energy if you can get it done in under 50 seconds.
- 9dev 9mo ago
  Where does that number come from? Does it factor in the energy required to build the servers used to train the model? Does it factor in… the training?
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    Hopefully we aren’t doing too much AI training to work out 200 * 1000. If a computer is involved at all it’s disappointing, if AI is used, more so.
    - 9dev 9mo ago
      It doesn't matter what the model is actually doing at the end of the day, when training and hosting it involves massive amounts of energy.
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    There is no end to this energy comparison... For example does it factor in the 18-24 years needed to train a human and the energy used for that?
    - 9dev 9mo ago
      No, but humans existing is the one, fundamental constant of our existence. AI, and its usage for the most minuscule of tasks, is a choice.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  If humans aren’t more efficient the energy is still used, as they remain alive. Maybe the AI will notice this?
jasomill 9mo ago
While I don't know how more or less efficient it is, WolframAlpha works well for these sorts of approximations, and shows its work more clearly than the AI chatbots I've used.

by 9dev 9mo ago

Using your brain is so vastly more energy efficient, we might just only need half of that 30 GW capacity if fewer people had these leftpad-style knee-jerk reactions.

wongarsu 9mo ago

Each person uses about 100W (2000kcal/24h=96W). Running all of humanity takes about 775GW. Sure, using or not using your brain is a negligible energy difference, so if you aren't using it you really should, for energy efficiency's sake. But I don't think the claim that our brains are more energy efficient is obviously true on its own. The issue is more about induced demand from having all this external "thinking" capacity on your fingertips

program_whiz 9mo ago
Is there an AI system with functionality at or equal to a human brain that operates on less than 100W? Its currently the most efficient model we have. You compare all of humanity's energy expenditure, but to make the comparison, you need to consider the cost of replicating all that compute with AI (assuming we had an AGI at human level in all regards, or a set of AIs that when operated together could replace all human intelligence).
- tlb 9mo ago
  No one will ever agree on when AI systems have equivalent functionality to a human brain. But lots of jobs consist of things a computer can now do for less than 100W. Also, while a body itself uses only 100W, a normal urban lifestyle uses a few thousand watts for heat, light, cooking, and transportation.
  - 9dev 9mo ago
    > Also, while a body itself uses only 100W, a normal urban lifestyle uses a few thousand watts for heat, light, cooking, and transportation. Add to that the tier-n dependencies this urban lifestyle has—massive supply chains sprawling across the planet, for example involving thousands upon thousands of people and goods involved in making your morning coffee happen.
    - wongarsu 9mo ago
      Wikipedia quoted global primary energy production at 19.6 TW, or about 2400W/person. Which is obviously not even close to equally distributed. Per-country it gets complicated quickly, but naively taking the total from [1] brings the US to 9kW per person. And that's ignoring sources like food from agriculture, including the food we feed our food. To be fair, AI servers also use a lot more energy than their raw power demand if we use the same metrics. But after accounting for everything, an American and an 8xH100 server might end up in about the same ballpark Which is not meant as an argument for replacing Americans with AI servers, but it puts AI power demand into context https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
- wongarsu 9mo ago
  Obviously we don't have AGI so we can't compare many tasks. But on tasks where AI does perform at comparable levels (certain subsets of writing, greenfield coding and art) it performs fairly well. They use more power but are also much faster, and that about cancels out. There are plenty of studies that try to put numbers on the exact tradeoff, usually focused more on CO2. Plenty that find AI better by some absurd degree (800 times more efficient at 3d modelling, 130 to 1500 times more efficient at writing, or 300 to 3000 times more efficient at illustrating [1]). The one I'd trust the most is [2] where GPT4 was 5-19 times less CO2 efficient than humans at solving coding challenges 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x?fromPaywallRec=false https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x?fromPaywa... 2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24658-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-24658-5
- pixl97 9mo ago
  >all human intelligence So, this is rather complex because you can turn AI energy usage to nearly zero when not in use. Humans have this problem of needing to consume a large amount of resources for 18-24 years with very little useful output during that time, and have to be kept running 24/7 otherwise you lose your investment. And even then there is a lot of risk they are going to be gibbering idiots and represent a net loss of your resource expenditure. For this I have a modern Modest Proposal they we use young children as feed stock for biofuel generation before they become a resource sink. Not only do you save the child from a life of being a wage slave, you can now power your AI data center. I propose we call this the Matrix Efficiency Saving System (MESS).
- Aerroon 9mo ago
  >Is there an AI system with functionality at or equal to a human brain that operates on less than 100W? Obviously not equal to a human brain, but my GPU takes about 150W and can draw an image in a minute that would take me forever to replicate.
Majromax 9mo ago
I did some math for this particular case by asking Google’s Gemini Pro 3 (via AI studio) to evaluate the press release. Nvidia has since edited the release to remove the “tons of copper” claim, but it evaluated the other numbers at a reported API cost of about 3.8 cents. If the stated pricing just recovers energy cost, that implies 1500kJ of energy as a maximum (less if other costs are recovered in the pricing). A human thinking for 10 minutes would use sbout 6kJ of direct energy. I agree with your point about induced demand. The “win” wouldn’t be looking at a single press release with already-suspect numbers, but rather looking at essentially all press releases of note, a task not generally valuable enough to devote people towards. That being said, we normally consider it progress when we can use mechanical or electrical energy to replace or augment human work.

blueg3 9mo ago

A Gemini query uses about a kilojoule. The brain runs at 20 W (though the whole human costs 100 W). So, the human is less energy if you can get it done in under 50 seconds.

9dev 9mo ago
Where does that number come from? Does it factor in the energy required to build the servers used to train the model? Does it factor in… the training?
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  Hopefully we aren’t doing too much AI training to work out 200 * 1000. If a computer is involved at all it’s disappointing, if AI is used, more so.
  - 9dev 9mo ago
    It doesn't matter what the model is actually doing at the end of the day, when training and hosting it involves massive amounts of energy.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  There is no end to this energy comparison... For example does it factor in the 18-24 years needed to train a human and the energy used for that?
  - 9dev 9mo ago
    No, but humans existing is the one, fundamental constant of our existence. AI, and its usage for the most minuscule of tasks, is a choice.
lostlogin 9mo ago
If humans aren’t more efficient the energy is still used, as they remain alive. Maybe the AI will notice this?

jasomill 9mo ago

While I don't know how more or less efficient it is, WolframAlpha works well for these sorts of approximations, and shows its work more clearly than the AI chatbots I've used.