Will the coming GPT revolution require significantly more energy?

Question

Just something I am thinking about, wondering if we can even know. If we completely replaced and/or augmented, e.g., web search with GPT(-like) models, would there be substantially more energy needed in order to sustain this? (Or less, or about the same?)

PaulHoule · Accepted Answer

If you believe this paperhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06219it will actually save energy.

gus_massa · Answer

The amount of electricity Google uses in each search is bounded by how much money they get from the adds in that page. It's not a direct page by page calculation. Just an average value.If someone in Google propose a new search method that cost more money (in average) than they money they get (in average), the proposal will be ignored.

akasakahakada · Answer

I will say it save more energy. Since intelligence is being accumulated inside the weights, we do not need to waste time on re-training students or robots again and again to do the same task.Think of that training a teacher take more than 10 years at minimum, and still they do not perform well.

bpiche · Answer

You better believe it

Will the coming GPT revolution require significantly more energy?

Just something I am thinking about, wondering if we can even know. If we completely replaced and/or augmented, e.g., web search with GPT(-like) models, would there be substantially more energy needed in order to sustain this? (Or less, or about the same?)

If you believe this paper
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06219
it will actually save energy.

I will say it save more energy. Since intelligence is being accumulated inside the weights, we do not need to waste time on re-training students or robots again and again to do the same task.
Think of that training a teacher take more than 10 years at minimum, and still they do not perform well.

You better believe it