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Computing is efficient - by Andy Masley

andymasley.substack.com · 2,413 words · saved by 1 readers

In conversations about AI and the environment, there’s an important simple intuition I think a lot of people are missing: computing is efficient. Once you have this intuition, conversations about AI and climate become easy to navigate. Computers have been specially designed to deliver unfathomable amounts of information relative to the energy they use. They are extremely energy efficient for the tasks we give them. I’d go so far as to say they’re the most energy efficient parts of our lives. Here I’m using the standard definition of efficiency: Let’s say I want to read a book. I can either download an ebook or get a physical copy. I read 50 pages per hour. A rough calculation says printing a 300 page book uses about 4000 Wh of energy, so a physical book costs 600 Wh for every hour I read. If I download an ebook to my laptop, the energy cost of the download is negligible1, so all the energy I use is just keeping my computer on, which is around 30 Wh for 1 hour of reading2. Why is this d

In conversations about AI and the environment, there’s an important simple intuition I think a lot of people are missing: computing is efficient. Once you have this intuition, conversations about AI and climate become easy to navigate. Computers have been specially designed to deliver unfathomable amounts of information relative to the energy they use. They are extremely energy efficient for the tasks we give them. I’d go so far as to say they’re the most energy efficient parts of our lives. Here I’m using the standard definition of efficiency: \(\text{Efficiency} = \frac{\text{How much…

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