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.

  • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    How much power does the brain consume? In bagels. How many bagels does ChatGPT consume?

    The great thing about math is that it’s interchangeable.

    https://rpsc.energy.gov/energy-data-facts#collapse-accordion-25-3

    The average U.S. household used about 77 million British thermal units (Btu) in 2015

    https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/british-thermal-unit-to-kilocalorie/

    The energy in kilocalories is equal to the energy in british thermal units multiplied by 0.252164.

    33,000 households x 77,000,000 Btu/household x 0.252164 kcal/Btu = 640,748,724,000 kcal

    https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-bagels

    One plain medium-sized bagel –  about 100 grams – has about 264 calories

    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/kcal-vs-calories

    Instead, the terms calories — capitalized or not — and kcal are used interchangeably and refer to the same amount of energy

    640,748,724,000 kcal / 264 kcal/bagel = 2,427,078,500 bagels

    Your homework is finding out how much energy the brain consumes in bagels

      • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        The original article doesn’t specify a unit of time:

        Most experts agree that nuclear fusion won’t contribute significantly to the crucial goal of decarbonizing by mid-century to combat the climate crisis. Helion’s most optimistic estimate is that by 2029 it will produce enough energy to power 40,000 average US households; one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes.

        Based on context clues, it’s probably consumption per year

          • Jose A Lerma@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 years ago

            That’s some good diligence!

            It looks like the ecoflow values are lower:

            https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-btu-per-hour/

            Since one kilowatt is equal to 3,412.14245 btu per hour

            30 KWh/day x 365 days x 3,412 Btu/KWh = 37,361,400 Btu

            Which is half the value I found for 2015. Does ecoflow have more current data and houses are twice as efficient? Maybe. They’re also trying to sell something, so maybe it’s based on data from their products. They don’t mention where they got it from.

            The welovecycling conversion is off by 1000 (maybe the kilocalorie threw them off?)

            https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/joule-to-kilocalorie/

            Since one kilocalorie is equal to 4,184 joules

            1 kcal = 4,184 J so 1 J = 1/4,184 kcal = 0.00023900573613 kcal

            Otherwise, your math was right, just off by 3 zeros, so a household is more like 3.6 bagels per hour.

            The nist site also doesn’t specify a unit of time, but if it is 20 watts/hour (Wh) we’d only need to move it 3 places for KWh, or 0.020 KWh.

            Too many conversions can introduce errors, so we can go from KWh to kcal directly:

            https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-kilocalorie-per-hour/

            Since one kilowatt is equal to 860.420815 kilocalories per hour

            0.020 KWh x 860 kcalh/KWh = 17.2 kcalh

            Which, yeah, is not much of a bagel per hour. Keep in mind that the daily recommended calories for an average adult is 2000 kcal.

            All in all, this was a fun thought experiment, so thanks for looking into it further!