Dollar Per Watt

Economy (as indicated by the GDP) goes hand in hand with energy consumption. The better developed economies consume more and the less developed - well - consume less. And this ratio has been pretty stable over many years, with countries like the United States increasing the GDP and decreasing the energy use slightly.

Now with cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, this is probably falling a lot. Both technologies - crypto and AI consume outrageous amounts of energy and contribute very little (if anything) to the GDP.

It seems the most progress in AI is in generating noise and misinformation. The Register has reported recently that

As The Register opined in 2022 and reported in January this year, search quality has declined because search engines index low-quality AI-generated content and present it in search results. This remains an ongoing area of concern.

And this is (unfortunately) in line with my own expectations and experience. I wonder if we are able to stop this madness or is it a slow (but steady) downhill slide?

Comments

  1. Richard LucasAug 31, 2024, 1:19:00 PM

    Good point.

    Back in the 1980s my economics Director of Studies at Cambridge Michael Kuczynski
    told us that a good proxy for economic success what value added per kilo.
    This was in the days of the Walkman and then iPod (not pad).

    I'm not sure that GDP/Watt is a good universal measure, because in some countries like
    Iceland or presumably, hydro/wind rich energy is both abundant and carbon footprint lite, but it is definitely a good one to keep track.

    Some countries have higher standards of domestic heating/AC than others, so comparing badly (or old) badly insulated buildings in UK with Germany is not comparing like with like.

    There are lots of alternative measures of efficiency, and by no means to the "most advanced" countries score highest.

    - "number of produced per hour, employee, "
    - speed with which a government service is delivered (new phone line, electricity connection, library ticket, Tax ID, passport, driving licence... _)
    - ease of doing something if you not using a local phone - (impossible to check in at a Vancouver accelerator, report a crime/bomb on a UK train)...
    - collecting luggage after disembarking from a plane at an airport, getting through immigration when holding a valid pre-agreed visa
    - Getting any response at all when reporting a crime.
    - reporting a alleged violation of local or EU law to a local, national or EU agency and getting a response.
    When dealing with companies, getting meaningful service out of a mobile phone operator, bank, car hire company... (Vodafone, HSBC, Europcar note... )


    You might like this podcast interview from one of my TED/TEDx friends Dave Troy
    https://pod.co/dave-troy/popping-the-ai-bubble-with-gary-marcus

    One of the best mental images from the interview was the "mad cow" analogy.

    During the BSE mad cow disease scandal, it turned out that in the UK, cows were being fed
    with food made from --- dead cows..

    The analogy is AI LLM models being fed on data generated by AI LLM models...

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  2. HeadworxSep 1, 2024, 9:43:00 PM

    Wonderful feedback, Richard! Most of the alternative measures you've mentioned fall into the "quality" category, which I love a lot, as opposed to the raw GDP. Was listening to an interview with Fareed Zakaria yesterday, and he pointed out how wealth these days has become decoupled from quality. Of course the super wealthy typically enjoy high quality of life, but that no longer is the case for the middle class. Services, food quality, and the general quality of life are considered much higher now in Europe as contrasted with the US. For an average person, Europe has become the model. Living in Europe and spending almost half of my time in America I do agree.

    Thanks for the Dave Troy tip. Added to my list.

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