Generative AI uses more energy on non-English text

Re:Generative AI uses more energy on non-English text by davidmurdoch on Saturday November 14, 2026 @10:27AM (#50497777)

Written English is still pretty good when compared to all languages. When considering UTF-8 bytes, a English is almost as good as Chinese, since Chinese uses about 3 bytes per character.

For spoken language, French and English are at the top, but most languages are about the same bits/second. Languages with less information density are just spoken faster to make up for it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Generative AI uses more energy on non-English text by bloak on Saturday November 14, 2026 @10:37AM (#50497852)

How fast people speak is more a cultural thing than a language thing. People in Texas, for example, speak more slowly than other speakers of American English.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Generative AI uses more energy on non-English text by davidmurdoch on Saturday November 14, 2026 @10:40AM (#50497884)

Here's a study on it, I don't know if they included Texans or not: https://verbavia.com/blog/which-language-is-spoken-the-faste...

[ Parent | on HN ]