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logicchains 3 days ago

There's no efficient algorithm for simulating a human brain, and you certainly haven't invented one so you've got absolutely no excuse to act smug about it. LLMs are already within an order of magnitude of the energy efficiency as the human brain, it's probably not possible to make them much more efficient algorithmically.

rhdhfjej 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your brain has a TDP of 15W while frontier LLMs require on the order of megawatts. That's 5-6 orders of magnitude difference, despite our semiconductors having a lithographic feature size that's also orders of magnitude smaller than our biological neurons. You should do some more research.

adrian_b 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The TDP of a typical human brain is not 15 W, but 25 W, so about the same as for many notebook or mini-PC CPUs, but otherwise your argument stands.

The idle power consumption of a human is around 100 W.

logicchains 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Your brain has a TDP of 15W while frontier LLMs require on the order of megawatts.

You should do some basic maths; the megawatts are used for serving many LLM instances at once. The correct comparison is the cost of just a single LLM instance.

rhdhfjej 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, the cost figures published by LLM labs imply a power consumption measured in megawatts for each instance of top performance frontier models. Take the L.

irjustin 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm really sad the core argument for the Matrix's existence doesn't hold up (it never did, just for me as a kid is all).

juliangamble 3 days ago | parent [-]

They started with a different, more brilliant idea, of using human brains as a giant neural net, then backed away from that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508832

irjustin 3 days ago | parent [-]

oh wow that's cool. I do understand why they moved away from it. Battery is waaaayyyyy easier to understand for the layman and lay-kid (me).