this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
118 points (96.1% liked)

Technology

6236 readers
108 users here now

Which posts fit here?

Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.


Post guidelines

[Opinion] prefixOpinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.


Rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original linkPost URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communicationAll communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. InclusivityEveryone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacksAny kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangentsStay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may applyIf something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.


Companion communities

!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip


Icon attribution | Banner attribution


If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
all 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] hector@lemmy.today 23 points 4 days ago (3 children)

People are incredibly efficient compared to machines of any kind. You can't run a machine that long on 2000 calories of energy, which is what enough energy to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree celsius.

Or the food definition is raising a kilogram of water 1 degree celsius, so the food calorie is a calorie*1,000.

Life is way way more efficient than machines, that take a lot of energy, not the least AI that uses like 6x as much or whatever as normal computer operations, last I heard.

Altman is a confidence man, emulating Musk and his ilk, this is who society respects, not people that do anything great, but people who hype stock prices and make people think they will do great things.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Note that dietary calories are kilocalories, so 2,000 calories of food is 2,000,000 calories from a physics standpoint.

This issue goes away if you use the proper SI unit, the joule.

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Whilst nothing you say here is wrong, humans have a tendency to want more things than machines. A place to live (perhaps a mansion with its own pool), transportation (maybe a private jet or a million dollar supercar) and other general recreation (such as a datacenter full of GPU's hallucinating cartoons of scantily clad women). So really, a human is pretty energy intensive when you think about it, compared to their rather low number of working hours (eesh, sleep takes so much time).

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Kilocalories are basically watt-hours. How many images do you think a kilowatt gaming rig can generate in two hours, versus a human being drawing all day long?

[–] AngryMob@lemmy.one 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah images is actually a bad example for us humans. Using a small model with a modern lora, you can generate near photorealistic images, easily 1 every second or so on moderate hardware.

Granted we can make 1 "perfect" image better than most big image models typically can even with lots of time, but thats a different discussion.

[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 28 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Call me when you can run AI on burritos.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

do you eat burritos ? because we can make things that can eat burrito eaters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

You can skip a step and run a computer on sunlight.

If you live in the right place you might already be doing so.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.zip 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Training humans doesn't destroy the planet, nor the hardware market, nor it raises electric bills for all citizens, nor it concentrates billions in the hands of a few individuals like you are doing with your company and all your brainwashing attempts.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Right, none of those things were happening until just now.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 points 4 days ago

Good point.

Let's turn off Sam to save energy.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 10 points 4 days ago

“Now that we don’t do that, you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality.”

He knows he's a con artist, he knows people know he's a con artist, and yet he's talking as if we were supposed to trust him to not be a con artist. That's basically to call everyone stupid/gullible/trash by proxy.

He added that it’s “fair” to be concerned about “the energy consumption — not per query, but in total, because the world is now using so much AI.” In his view, this means the world needs to “move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”

Even before those huge datacentres, "don't reduce consumption, increase production" is how we're cooking the planet.

There’s no legal requirement for tech companies to disclose how much energy and water they use,

That's something that could be fixed. At least in Europe, China, Japan; probably here in Latin America, too.

Altman also complained that many discussions about ChatGPT’s energy usage are “unfair,” especially when they focus on “how much energy it takes to train an AI model, relative to how much it costs a human to do one inference query.”

Whataboutism at its grossest.

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

How would it know? Did it just look at the amount of robot fuel it used in a week and then compare?

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago

I agree, in order to remain morally consistent we should remove all the most energy-intensive humans as well. Oh look, it's the billionaires. Well, you guys had a good run, time to get in the pit barbara-pit

[–] Binturong@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

Please inform him that I have no interest in what he thinks, and also remind him that he belongs in jail. Thank you.

[–] the_flying_pig@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

What if we used the energy produced by the human body to power AIs?

[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 7 points 4 days ago

We can start by burning Sam Altman's to generate some electricity, but I still won't interact with the fucking clankers.

Why didn't i take the blue pill..?