Comment on Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 2 days agoThis is completely arbitrary and supposition
It is, that’s the point. We don’t know because the AI companies are intentionally hiding that detail. My estimates are based on the real numbers we do have, and all we know about the closed source models is that they contain more parameters than the open source models, and more parameters = more energy use.
When I started adding multipliers to take a stab at the numbers, I was being conservative. A single AI voice response definitely takes more than 6500 joules, we just don’t know. It’s not that much of a stretch to assume that a voice generation is somewhere halfway between a text generation and a video generation. If my numbers were accurate, that would actually be great news for the AI companies. They would be shouting these numbers from the fucking rooftops to get the stink of this energy usage story off their backs. Corporations never disclose anything unless it is good news. Their silence says everything - if we were actually betting, I would gladly bet that my single video card uses way less energy than their data centers packed to the brim with higher-end GPUs. It’s just a no-brainer.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
What I said was I’ll bet one person uses more power running the game than the AI uses to respond to them. Just that.
Then you started inventing scenarios and moving goalposts to comparing one single video card to an entire data center. I guess because you didn’t want to let my statement go unchallenged, but you had nothing solid to back you up. You’re the one that posted 6500 joules, which you supported, and I appreciate that, but after that it’s all just supposition and guesses.
You’re right that it’s almost certainly higher than that. But I can generate text and images on my home PC. Not at the quality and speed of OpenAI or whatever they have on the back-end, but it can be done on my 1660. So my suggestion that running a 3D game consumes more power than generating a few lines seems pretty reasonable.
But I know someone who works for a company that has an A100 used for serving AI. I’ll ask and see if he has more information or even a better-educated guess than I do, and if I find out I’m wrong, I won’t suggest otherwise in the future.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Other than the obvious missing numbers, this is also missing scale. Sure, one response likely takes less energy than playing the game, but Fortnite averaged 1.4 million daily players the last year. Granted not all of them are going to interact with the bot, but a whole hell of a lot are going to, and do it multiple times in a row.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
And they used 1.4 million video cards. The scale is a wash. And yes, when it’s brand new folks are going to sit there for a bit appreciating how cool it is to talk to Darth Vader. And then he’s going to say some stupid out-of-character stuff, and the novelty is going to wear off, and the AI usage is going to go down, but the video card usage will stay the same.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Sure, that is true specifically for Vader, but the whole point of the article is that they are rolling out several new bots to keep the novelty up.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Yes, but by definition all of them are also playing the game, and given that this is mostly a novelty feature (and also based on how shockingly little use the user-facing chatbots I’ve seen in professional settings are utilized), I personally doubt that the chatbot energy usage will top the game’s.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
For sure that is true for Vader, bit the point of the article is to roll out several new bots to keep the novelty up
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 2 days ago
i appreciate that you are engaging deeply. I don’t really have anything else to say that i haven’t said already, but just wanted to show my respect there.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I appreciate this in return. Online I tend to throw around colorful epithets and I know that can come across as aggressive, and a couple of time I might’ve phrased things more enthusiastically than I aspire to. I appreciate that you were able to look past that and stay engaged on the topic.