Day 237 - The Issue will be Energy Consumption

June 02, 2024

The growing energy consumption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the need for more efficient models.

Key Points:

We are in an "intelligence arms race" focused on creating powerful AI models.
Current AI models require massive amounts of energy to train and operate.
This energy consumption is unsustainable and could limit future AI development.
The human brain is a much more efficient model, consuming minimal energy for its processing power.
The future of AI success hinges on developing models with a better intelligence-to-energy ratio.
Even small creatures like ants currently outperform large language models in this regard.

Quotes:

"The computing required to produce the machine intelligence we have now is a resource hog."
"Humans are an incredibly efficient machine, producing the maximum amount of intelligence for the least amount of energy consumption."
"The question will not be if we can create sentient intelligence. The question will be how much energy will it require?"
"So for now, it looks like God is still winning. A small little red fire ant has vastly superior intelligence to power ratio than any of the big large language models that we've seen built this last couple of years."

Action Items:

Pay attention to research on low-power AI models.
Consider the environmental impact of AI development.

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:00.768)
Okay, today is day 237. The issue will be energy consumption. So today I'm traveling. I need to come up with a better way to do my recordings while traveling instead of a hotel room. I know the audio is going to be horrible, so I apologize. But this is where we're heading in the intelligence arms race. I don't think everybody knows that we're in an intelligence creating arms race right now, but we are.

The question is who can produce the most intelligence at the least amount of consumption of energy. So far we are not doing a great job. We are sprawling giant computing farms of GPUs and other components to try to build faster and better intelligence models. The computing required to produce the machine intelligence we have now is a resource hog.

put it lightly. We already thought we had an intense sprawl of mega data centers dedicated to the hyperscalers, but the supporting infrastructure needed for massive large scales intelligence factories far out exceeded anything that we could have imagined in a data center prior to this last few years. When all is said and done, power consumption will be the ultimate issue. This is not the hippie earth loving side of me speaking either. This is the practical and very real reality of all living things.

Since the first carbon molecule stored the smallest amount of data, we have been in constant search for energy. Humans are the pinnacle of this process. It does not matter which side of the creation versus evolution side you are on, you have to realize that humans are an incredibly efficient machine, producing the maximum amount of intelligence for the least amount of energy consumption. Yesterday, I did not eat very much. I was trying to take a break from eating so much bad food this weekend.

My brain functioned all day long just fine almost on zero calories There's not a computer on the planet that can even get close can even get close to the raw computational power for the amount of energy burn that a human brain can

Guy Reams (02:14.592)
With all of our inventions, we are still not even close. The artificial intelligence models we are creating are also consuming massive amounts of energy to keep all GPUs, CPUs, and other supporting components processing. The intense growth of intelligent processing is met by an equally intense consumption of power. If we keep going at this pace, the question will not be if we can create sentient intelligence. The question will be how much energy will it require?

which is why we must keep a close eye on efforts to provide computational capability on extremely efficient power consumption. That ratio will ultimately decide where we are heading in this intelligence arms race. So for now, it looks like God is still winning. A small little red fire ant has vastly superior intelligence to power ratio than any of the big large language models that we've seen built this last couple of years. Thank you.