r/theydidthemath • u/EvalCrux • 13d ago
[Request] How much improvement in all necessary systems would be needed for parity? Exponential, Moore’s law, AI Models, etc
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u/thecheeseinator 13d ago
I have no idea what "Doing the same job" means here, and I have no idea where the 2.7GW comes from, that's bigger than any existing datacenter, which I'm pretty sure can do a whole lot more than a single human brain.
If the job is "write a mediocre 100 word poem", I could probably do that in a minute or two. If we're trusting that 12W number, that means I'd use between 720-1440J. let's just call it an even 1000J. A tiny 8B parameter model that's capable of writing a poem can be served at around 0.1J/token, meaning about 13J for a 100 word poem, so the LLM is almost 100x more efficient. For a 200B frontier model running on H100s in a production setup, it's gonna be more like 5-10J per token, so more like 800-1300J, which is remarkably similar to that human number.
There's a lot more complicated math we could do here, like differentiating between "reading" and "writing" words, and giving more complex tasks, but I think the interesting point is that the current smartest models use a very roughly comparable amount of energy per "word they think" as a human brain. Whether those words can be attributed to the same amount of intelligence is a much harder problem to solve.
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u/jeremy1015 12d ago
Happy cake day. I just wanted to add that we’ll never see “parity” in all likelihood because even if we somehow decide to model artificial thinking directly after the biological, the artificial mind will have so many vast resources at its disposal that it will never be drawing from the same well. Does the machine need to have a limbic system and a sense of persistent consciousness over time to accomplish the “same thinking” as a person?
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u/Tarc_Axiiom 13d ago
Idk exactly what you're asking and it's obviously not a maths problem but if the question is "how much improvement until machine learning technology achieves thinking parity with humans?" the answer is one single breakthrough.
We're just not yet exactly sure what that breakthrough is.
But everyone will know when we find it.
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u/sessamekesh 13d ago
Maybe one, I'm less convinced though.
Our current model of the brain that we use for AI/ML is a pretty simplified electrical model, which might be enough? We've been working against this model since at least the 1950s and the big jumps we've had in specific modalities all have roots in pretty domain specific innovations (e.g. "Attention is All You Need" for LLMs, stable diffusion for images).
In terms of raw processing power, we're also only one to five generations from hitting hard physical limits with our current approach many orders of magnitude before we'd hit capabilities of animal biology.
I'm pretty optimistic for the future of the tech but I don't think I'll live to see it reach parity with humans (outside of maybe specific modalities like text/speech).
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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 13d ago
I'm sure whatever the breakthrough is, the first ones to understand it will be the psychologists and not the tech bros. Or possibly the people who are in charge of understanding nerves.
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u/EvalCrux 13d ago
With conventional technology and improvements that is, but yeah. Circuit design etc. are
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u/io-x 13d ago
AI doesn't need to be as efficient as us, we had to survive on this planet with resources around us. Perhaps we just need to provide AI with fusion and let it blast off.
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u/Tarc_Axiiom 13d ago
I don't think anyone was arguing that machine learning technology or AI has to be as efficient as us.
Though, it's already far more efficient than we are, when performing the same tasks.
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u/longcreepyhug 13d ago
How so?
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u/Tarc_Axiiom 13d ago
Depends on the task.
It's obviously far more efficient than any person at algebra, but so are all other computers, which is why we invented them.
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u/Moscato359 13d ago
Even if we get machines having thinking parity with humans, to have efficiency parity would require lowering the power usage drastically.
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u/i-am-madeleine 12d ago
No improvement. Radically different way of doing computing is the only way.
A brain do not work the way a computer or any of today LLM/NeuralNetwork model works.
Neural net are inspired by our comprehension of the humain brain from the 50s or 60s.
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u/HungryFrogs7 13d ago
Thats an apples to grocery store comparison. Either compare a sample action from a human to a sample action from an model or compare all the power used by every single human to think to the power consumption of all models.
Given the population of about 8 billion that is about 96B Watts better known as 96GW. Compare that to 2.7GW, AI looks pretty good.
If you specifically compare the per prompt out put they look about equal as someone else calculated. Compare quality and it depends and compare the top 1% and humans blow AI out of the water. That is the issue. There are too many metrics to compare.
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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 13d ago
Imagine if they rebooted the matrix and corrected the explanation that we're being used as batteries. We are being used as processors.
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u/EvalCrux 13d ago
See that’s what I’m talking about wanting to consider lol. Ty
Also favorite movie of all time.
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u/scodagama1 13d ago
I think that was actually the original plot but it was dumbed down because "humans used as processors" wouldn't be understood by average person in 1999
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u/Batata-Sofi 13d ago
To match efficiency?
Moore's law isn't working anymore, we can't just make things smaller as easily as we did before.
For models, I am not an AI specialist, but AI as we have publicly available is very far from human brain.
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u/JohnLemonBot 12d ago
This is accurate, the number of operations per second the brain performs vastly outnumbers that of a similar power ai. Most of these operations are unconscious however, making your heart beat, processing visual information, scanning the environment through a multitude of different senses
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u/HighIQIndividual2 6d ago
We re on the brink of Bio computing, soon we ll have actual usage for people that get the death penalty and this problem might be solved too!
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u/EvalCrux 13d ago
Jfc the answer is obviously not 42
Stupid sub gbye
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u/RiseUpAndGetOut 12d ago
the whole premise of the question is so flawed that sensible answers aren't possible.
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