It’s been years since I looked into it and I don’t think I have access to my old notes, so I don’t plan to make a full entry. In short, I think the claim of “brains operate at near-maximum thermodynamic efficiency” is true. (I don’t know where Eliezer got 6 OoM but I think it’s wrong, or about some nonobvious metric [edit: like the number of generations used to optimize].)
I should also reiterate that I don’t think it’s relevant to AI doom arguments. I am not worried about a computer that can do what I can do with 10W; I am worried about a computer that can do more than what I can do with 10 kW (or 10 MW or so on).
[EDIT: I found one of the documents that I thought had this and it didn’t, and I briefly attempted to run the calculation again; I think 10^6 cost reduction is plausible for some estimates of how much computation the brain is using, but not others.]
I encourage you to participate. I will split the prize money between all serious entry, weighted by my subjective estimation of their respective Shapely value.
It’s been years since I looked into it and I don’t think I have access to my old notes, so I don’t plan to make a full entry. In short, I think the claim of “brains operate at near-maximum thermodynamic efficiency” is true. (I don’t know where Eliezer got 6 OoM but I think it’s wrong, or about some nonobvious metric [edit: like the number of generations used to optimize].)
I should also reiterate that I don’t think it’s relevant to AI doom arguments. I am not worried about a computer that can do what I can do with 10W; I am worried about a computer that can do more than what I can do with 10 kW (or 10 MW or so on).
[EDIT: I found one of the documents that I thought had this and it didn’t, and I briefly attempted to run the calculation again; I think 10^6 cost reduction is plausible for some estimates of how much computation the brain is using, but not others.]
I encourage you to participate. I will split the prize money between all serious entry, weighted by my subjective estimation of their respective Shapely value.