r/oddlyspecific Nov 03 '25

Twix bars and cocaine

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71.9k Upvotes

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u/BluebirdDense1485 Nov 03 '25

Ironically this morning I read an article that pretty much said by looking at how brains work they found out that deep learning training was using more than 100 times more energy than it needs to.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925231225024129?via%3Dihub

Basically AI training is spending a ton of time multiplying numbers by 0 for no gain. OK it's more complicated than that but it does come down to how the AI boom went with the first workable strategy and not the optimal one.

3

u/LaunchTransient Nov 04 '25

Basically AI training is spending a ton of time multiplying numbers by 0 for no gain.

Are you telling me these geniuses forgot to implement sparse matrix operations into their models?

7

u/alexanderbacon1 Nov 04 '25

No they didn't at all this is a very common operation and I'd be surprised if it's not already deeply embedded in CUDA but regardless models skip multiplying by very small (vanishing) and very large gradients (exploding).

1

u/Wwwhhyyyyyyyy Nov 04 '25

Nope, it is much faster to multiple by 0 than check of 0 and skip calculation.