This is where we are heading in the Intelligence creating arms race. Who can produce the most intelligence at the least consumption of energy. So far we are not doing a great job. The computing required to produce the machine intelligence we have now is a resource hog, to 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 scale intelligence factories will far out exceed anything we have put in a data center to date. When all is said and done, power consumption will be the ultimate issue.
This is not the hippy, earth loving side of me speaking either. This is a practical and very real reality of all living things. Since the first carbon molecule stored the smallest amount of data, we have been in the constant search for energy. Humans are the pinnacle of this process. 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 bad food. My brain functioned all day long on almost zero calories consumed. There is not a computer on the planet that can even get close to raw computational power for the amount of energy burned that the human brain can do.
With all our inventions, we are still not even close. The artificial intelligence models we are creating are also consuming massive amounts of energy to keep the GPUs, CPUs, and all 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 produce computational capability on extremely efficient power consumption. That ratio will ultimately decide where we are heading in the intelligence arms race.
Looks like God is still winning. A small little red fire ant has a vastly superior intelligence to power ratio then any of the large language models we have seen this last year.
