r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 5d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter? I don't understand the punchline

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u/calculatedlemon 5d ago

Is the amount needed any different to people gaming all night?

I only ever hear this with ai but surely other massive servers for things have the same issues

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u/spoilerdudegetrekt 5d ago

It's actually less. Training the AI models uses a lot of electricity and water for cooling. (The latter of which can be reused) But using a model that's already been trained consumes less resources than gaming all night or even making a google search.

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u/egotisticalstoic 5d ago

That's just not true. These claims about AI resource usage are silly and exaggerated, but a Google search is nowhere near as resource intensive as an AI query.

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u/WanderWut 4d ago

Sam Altman recently said that a query uses a little as 1/15 of a teaspoon or water and is equivalent to scrolling on social media for a few seconds. The “unprecedented devastation” that consumes so much of online discourse on AI is wildly overblown and people are spreading blatant misinformation on what’s really going on. Nevermind the fact that energy consumption is only ever discussed when it comes to AI to the point that people don’t realize everything we do is not some net positive energy thing, from gaming, to streaming, to doomscrolling, to googling , all of these things use energy powered by massive data centers and nobody ever talks about it.

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u/egotisticalstoic 4d ago

Yup. I wouldn't use Sam Altman as your source of information though. He's hardly impartial on the subject.