From e67cee9f10bb642e5ec4cc1bac6e2f8b13ebbfe4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mahdi Dibaiee Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2022 13:50:47 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] animals-and-machines --- _bibliography/references.bib | 23 +++++ _posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md | 107 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 130 insertions(+) create mode 100644 _posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md diff --git a/_bibliography/references.bib b/_bibliography/references.bib index 2511cb0..151aa50 100644 --- a/_bibliography/references.bib +++ b/_bibliography/references.bib @@ -496,3 +496,26 @@ year={1953}, publisher={Shahnamah Press Bombay} } + +@misc{enwiki:1120152608, + author = "{Wikipedia contributors}", + title = "Intelligence --- {Wikipedia}{,} The Free Encyclopedia", + year = "2022", + url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intelligence&oldid=1120152608", + note = "[Online; accessed 15-November-2022]" + } + +@misc{techcrunch-stability-ai, + author={Wiggers, Kyle}, + title={This startup is setting a DALL-E 2-like AI free, consequences be + damned}, + year={2022}, + url="https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/a-startup-wants-to-democratize-the-tech-behind-dall-e-2-consequences-be-damned" +} + +@article{khan2012energy, + title={Energy Consumption Of The Human Body}, + author={Khan, Donish}, + year={2012}, + url="http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/khan1/" +} diff --git a/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md b/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40fd3a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md @@ -0,0 +1,107 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "Animals and Machines: A Misled Comparison" +subtitle: "I find comparing animals and machines absurd" +date: 2022-11-13 00:00:00 +permalink: animals-and-machines/ +categories: personal, science +published: false +math: true +author: Mahdi +--- + +I find comparing animals and machines absurd, because of course, animals win! +What am I talking about here, what am I comparing? I've had multiple occasions +where I have had to defend the stance that animals, and in general, biological +beings are much more efficient and intelligent than human-made +machines and AI. Let's first set the stage. + +## Intelligence + +What do I mean when I talk about intelligence? I think the definition I find on +Wikipedia is a fair one: + +> Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, +logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, +planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it +can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain +it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment +or context. {% cite enwiki:1120152608 %} + +## Efficiency + +This I define as the ratio of useful output from a system to the amount of +energy it needs to do carry the action. + +# An Absurd Comparison + +"This AI is much more intelligent than dogs", or even in more extreme cases "This +AI is better than humans!". + +Some AI achievements are _impressive_, for sure. Stable Diffusion or Dall-E +achieve impressive results. GPT-3 can be impressive sometimes, self-driving cars +are also sometimes impressive, but being impressive is not the same as being +intelligent or efficient, let's dissect what goes on behind such impressive +feats of AI, and then we can look at the factors in the open. + +## Stable Diffusion + +What does it take for Stable Diffusion to create an image given some text? + +The dataset used to train Stable Diffusion is the +[LAION-5B](https://laion.ai/blog/laion-5b/) dataset with 5.85 billion image-text +pairs. {% cite techcrunch-stability-ai %} + +This means, we first had to have 5.85 billion images made by humans, and then +labelled by humans, that's a ton of energy and time spent on the training data +of this model. + +To train the model, 100 Nvidia A100 GPUs were used, for a total of 150,000 +GPU-hours, at a cost of $600,000. {% cite techcrunch-stability-ai %} + +Let that number sink in, 150,000 GPU-hours were required to train this model +with 5.85 billion images. Nvidia A100 GPU has a max thermal design power (TDP) of 300W, and +while TDP is not the best measure of actual power consumption, it can serve as a +ballpark. So this GPU uses 300W of power per GPU hour, which is 45000kW for +150,000 GPU hours, this is discounting the energy consumption of all the other +components of the computers training stable diffusion. + +## Human + +Now imagine I asked a human artist to draw the same image I asked of Stable +Diffusion. I'm pretty sure this human has not seen 5.85 billion images with text +prompts, and I'm also pretty sure they have not had to spend $600,000 for +training (including surviving and feeding themselves), and they also did not +have to use as much energy as 150,000 GPU-hours of Nvidia A100s. A human body +consumes food to generate energy, and the basic amount of energy consumption of +the human body is about 4kJ/kilogram of body weight and daily hour {% cite +khan2012energy %}. To get watts per hour, we can use the formulas below: + +Power in watts $P_W$ is equal to the energy in joules $E_j$, divided by the time period in +seconds $t_s$: + +$P_W = E_j / t_s$ + +So given that I weigh 70kg, my body consumes around 280kJ per hour, plugging +into the formula: + +$P_W = 280000 / 3600$ + +$P_W = 77.7$ + +So my body consumes somewhere around 77.7 watts per hour, that's only 680652 watts or +680kW per year! With this consumption, I could live 66 years before I would +consume the same amount of energy as the training procedure of Stable Diffusion. + +I hope we can agree that as impressive as Stable Diffusion is, it does not beat +a good human artist, and it sure is not as efficient as a human. I think to say that any +AI is smarter than humans in any subject, must take into account the efficiency +of the system as well. + +## Hummingbird + +My favourite example when it comes to comparing animals and machines, is the +tiny hummingbird, which I think is more impressive than any machine made by +humans, let me explain! + +{% bibliography --cited %}