the thing we are frightened of is not close to the thing we already have

Christopher Butler spends some time here rethinking the question of the energetic cost of LLM usage by comparing it to the always-on wattage of a human brain. There are more than eight billion devices on this planet that learn continuously from almost no data, repair themselves while running, last for decades, and do all of it on twenty watts. We did not design them. We still don’t understand how they work. On the measure that will actually decide what this technology becomes — not its capability, but its cost per unit of capability — the thing we are frightened of is not close to the thing we already have. Our brains. Us. Christopher Butler https://www.chrbutler.com/what-it-costs-to-think He notes that this “cost per unit” is conspicuous by its absence, though I don’t think there’s any conspiratorial or underhand reason for that; it’s just the well-trained instinct of Business Mind, putting out whichever number looks like it might persuade. While I’ll concede it’s nice to have these…