5 ms·

Just out of curiosity, I wish online LLMs would show real-time power usage and actual dollar costs as you interact with it. It would be so insightful to underst

Just out of curiosity, I wish online LLMs would show real-time power usage and actual dollar costs as you interact with it. It would be so insightful to understand to which degree the technology is subsidized and what the actual value/cost ratio is. I've read somewhere that generating a single AI image draws as much power as a full smartphone charge. In case the suspicion is true that costs are too high to be monetized, then the current scale-up phase is going to be interesting. Right now people infrequently have a chat with AI. That's quite a different scenario from having it integrated across every stack and it constantly being used in the background, by billions of people. Late as they may be, for the consumer space I think Apple is clever to push as much as possible to the local device.

polytely 1y ago
feel like if they did this the whole AI bubble would pop
- keyringlight 1y ago
  It's not just Apple integrating AI into the hardware, Microsoft has been part of a big push to "AI PCs" with a certain minimum capabilities (and I'm sure their partners don't mind selling new gear) and the copilot button on keyboards, and certain android models have the processors and memory capacities specifically for running AI
Saigonautica 1y ago
Also out of curiosity, I did some quick math regarding that claim you read somewhere. Cellphone battery charge: I have a 5000mAh cellphone battery. If we ignore charging losses (pretty low normally, but not sure at 67W fast charging)... That battery stores about 18.5 watt-hours of energy, or about 67 kilojoules. Generating a single image at 1024x1024 resolution with Stable Diffusion on my PC takes somewhere under a minute at a maximum power draw under 500W. Lets cap that at 500*60 = 30 kilojoules. So it seems plausible that for cellphones with smaller batteries, and/or using intense image generation settings, there could be overlap! For typical cases, I think that you could get multiple (but low single digit) of AI generated images for the power cost of a cellphone charge, maybe a bit better at scale. So in other words, maybe "technically incorrect" but not a bad approximation to communicate power use in terms most people would understand. I've heard worse!
- facile3232 1y ago
  > Generating a single image at 1024x1024 resolution with Stable Diffusion on my PC takes somewhere under a minute at a maximum power draw under 500W That's insane, holy shit. That's not even a very large image. Apparently I was off on my estimates about how power hungry gpus are these days by an order of magnitude.
  - baq 1y ago
    4090s literally melted their power connectors... https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-claims-melting-connector-issue-has-been-resolved-geforce-rtx-50-should-not-to-be-affected https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-claims-melting-connector-...
  - elpocko 1y ago
    Why is that "insane?" Drawing the same image in Photoshop, or modeling and rendering it, in the same quality and resolution on the same computer, would require much more time and energy.
    - facile3232 1y ago
      > Drawing the same image in Photoshop, or modeling and rendering it, in the same quality and resolution on the same computer, would require much more time and energy. Right, but there was a point at which we could stop people from doing stupid shit because it's useless and they're bad with money. Now it seems we've embraced irrational and misanthropic spending as a core service. We honestly just need to take money away from people who obviously have no clue what to do with it. Using AI seems like a perfect signal for people who have lost touch with an understanding of value.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  A 1024x1024 image seems like an unrealistically small image size in this day and age. That’s closer to an icon than a useful image size for display purposes.
  - 1y ago
chii 1y ago
> It would be so insightful to understand to which degree the technology is subsidized and what the actual value/cost ratio is. it would be insightful for competitors too, because they could use this as part of their analysis and price strategies against you. Therefore, no company would possibly allow such data to be revealed. And in any case, if these LLM providers burn cash to provide a service to you, then you ought to take maximal advantage of it. Just like how uber subsidized rides.
kosh2 1y ago
How much energy does it cost for a human to generate an image?
- card_zero 1y ago
  You mean, how much extra energy, compared to what the human was going to do instead? It might be a negative amount. But that might be a bad thing, an artist could get fat.
rchaud 1y ago
> It would be so insightful to understand to which degree the technology is subsidized and what the actual value/cost ratio is. For whom would this be beneficial? The design goals of these products are to get as many users as fast as possible, using it for as long as possible. "Don't make me think" is the #1 UX principle at work here. You wouldn't expect a gas pump terminal to tut-tut about your carbon emissions.
tzs 1y ago
> I've read somewhere that generating a single AI image draws as much power as a full smartphone charge. To put that in perspective, using the 67 kJ of energy for a smartphone charge given in Saigonautica's comment you can charge a smartphone 336 times for $1 if you are paying the average US residential electricity rate of just under $0.16/kWh. You could charge a smartphone 128 times for $1 if you were in the state with the most expensive electricity (Hawaii) and paying the average rate there of around $0.42. Saigonautica's battery is on the large size. It's a little bigger than the battery of an iPhone 16 Pro Max. A plain iPhone 16 could be charged 470 times for $1 at average US residential electricity prices. For most people energy used to charge a smartphone is in the "this is too small to ever care about" category. We can do a similar calculation for AA rechargeable batteries, and the results might be surprising. $1 of electricity at the US average residential rate is enough to recharge an AA Eneloop nearly 2300 times. Of course there are inefficiencies in the charger and charging, but if we can get even 75% efficiency that's good enough for more then 1700 charges. That really surprised me when I first learned it. I knew it wasn't going to be a lot...but 1700 charges is I think more than the number of times I'll swap out an AA battery over my entire lifetime. I hadn't expected that all my AA battery use for my whole life would be less than $1 worth of electricity.

polytely 1y ago

feel like if they did this the whole AI bubble would pop

keyringlight 1y ago
It's not just Apple integrating AI into the hardware, Microsoft has been part of a big push to "AI PCs" with a certain minimum capabilities (and I'm sure their partners don't mind selling new gear) and the copilot button on keyboards, and certain android models have the processors and memory capacities specifically for running AI

Saigonautica 1y ago

Also out of curiosity, I did some quick math regarding that claim you read somewhere. Cellphone battery charge: I have a 5000mAh cellphone battery. If we ignore charging losses (pretty low normally, but not sure at 67W fast charging)... That battery stores about 18.5 watt-hours of energy, or about 67 kilojoules. Generating a single image at 1024x1024 resolution with Stable Diffusion on my PC takes somewhere under a minute at a maximum power draw under 500W. Lets cap that at 500*60 = 30 kilojoules. So it seems plausible that for cellphones with smaller batteries, and/or using intense image generation settings, there could be overlap! For typical cases, I think that you could get multiple (but low single digit) of AI generated images for the power cost of a cellphone charge, maybe a bit better at scale. So in other words, maybe "technically incorrect" but not a bad approximation to communicate power use in terms most people would understand. I've heard worse!

facile3232 1y ago
> Generating a single image at 1024x1024 resolution with Stable Diffusion on my PC takes somewhere under a minute at a maximum power draw under 500W That's insane, holy shit. That's not even a very large image. Apparently I was off on my estimates about how power hungry gpus are these days by an order of magnitude.
- baq 1y ago
  4090s literally melted their power connectors... https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-claims-melting-connector-issue-has-been-resolved-geforce-rtx-50-should-not-to-be-affected https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-claims-melting-connector-...
- elpocko 1y ago
  Why is that "insane?" Drawing the same image in Photoshop, or modeling and rendering it, in the same quality and resolution on the same computer, would require much more time and energy.
  - facile3232 1y ago
    > Drawing the same image in Photoshop, or modeling and rendering it, in the same quality and resolution on the same computer, would require much more time and energy. Right, but there was a point at which we could stop people from doing stupid shit because it's useless and they're bad with money. Now it seems we've embraced irrational and misanthropic spending as a core service. We honestly just need to take money away from people who obviously have no clue what to do with it. Using AI seems like a perfect signal for people who have lost touch with an understanding of value.
nkrisc 1y ago
A 1024x1024 image seems like an unrealistically small image size in this day and age. That’s closer to an icon than a useful image size for display purposes.
- 1y ago

chii 1y ago

> It would be so insightful to understand to which degree the technology is subsidized and what the actual value/cost ratio is. it would be insightful for competitors too, because they could use this as part of their analysis and price strategies against you. Therefore, no company would possibly allow such data to be revealed. And in any case, if these LLM providers burn cash to provide a service to you, then you ought to take maximal advantage of it. Just like how uber subsidized rides.

kosh2 1y ago

How much energy does it cost for a human to generate an image?

card_zero 1y ago
You mean, how much extra energy, compared to what the human was going to do instead? It might be a negative amount. But that might be a bad thing, an artist could get fat.

rchaud 1y ago

> It would be so insightful to understand to which degree the technology is subsidized and what the actual value/cost ratio is. For whom would this be beneficial? The design goals of these products are to get as many users as fast as possible, using it for as long as possible. "Don't make me think" is the #1 UX principle at work here. You wouldn't expect a gas pump terminal to tut-tut about your carbon emissions.

tzs 1y ago

> I've read somewhere that generating a single AI image draws as much power as a full smartphone charge. To put that in perspective, using the 67 kJ of energy for a smartphone charge given in Saigonautica's comment you can charge a smartphone 336 times for $1 if you are paying the average US residential electricity rate of just under $0.16/kWh. You could charge a smartphone 128 times for $1 if you were in the state with the most expensive electricity (Hawaii) and paying the average rate there of around $0.42. Saigonautica's battery is on the large size. It's a little bigger than the battery of an iPhone 16 Pro Max. A plain iPhone 16 could be charged 470 times for $1 at average US residential electricity prices. For most people energy used to charge a smartphone is in the "this is too small to ever care about" category. We can do a similar calculation for AA rechargeable batteries, and the results might be surprising. $1 of electricity at the US average residential rate is enough to recharge an AA Eneloop nearly 2300 times. Of course there are inefficiencies in the charger and charging, but if we can get even 75% efficiency that's good enough for more then 1700 charges. That really surprised me when I first learned it. I knew it wasn't going to be a lot...but 1700 charges is I think more than the number of times I'll swap out an AA battery over my entire lifetime. I hadn't expected that all my AA battery use for my whole life would be less than $1 worth of electricity.