The Gentle Singularity

Re:The Gentle Singularity by deadbabe on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @08:25PM (#44243004)

How many watts does a human brain need to produce a response to a query?

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Re:The Gentle Singularity by nharada on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @08:48PM (#44243135)

I think you should include the entire body for your comparison, not just the brain. We're not just measuring the GPUs, we're measuring the datacenter.

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Re:The Gentle Singularity by hdjdbdirbrbtv on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @10:35PM (#44243675)

IIRC ( and it was 20 years ago now that I learnt this) the brain uses 20% of the body's resting energy usage. Most of that is keeping neurons polarised to the outside (ion pumps need ATP!!!).

The body uses 25w resting and thus the brain is about 5w.

Source: biology degree but like I said please take with the same amount of weight as a hallucinating LLM.

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Re:The Gentle Singularity by apt-apt-apt-apt on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @11:56PM (#44244055)

GPT says: Unless you're a hamster hooked up to a Fitbit, it's more like 60–70W for a normal adult human. So the brain’s real power draw is more like 15–20W, not 5W

Resting energy usage in humans is ~1200–1500 kcal/day, or about 60–70 watts, depending on the person. Logic holds, estimate is just low

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Re:The Gentle Singularity by hdjdbdirbrbtv on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @06:50AM (#44246203)

Lol thanks for the correction! like I said... it had been 20 years.. I misremembered the amounts :P

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Re:The Gentle Singularity by physix on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @09:43PM (#44243419)

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-much-energy-does-it-take-...

:-)

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