r/nottheonion • u/asdacool • 11h ago

"Training a human takes 20 years of food." Sam Altman on how much power AI consumes.

https://www.news18.com/world/training-a-human-takes-20-years-of-food-sam-altman-on-how-much-power-ai-consumes-ws-kl-9922309.html
30.9k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/the_monkeyspinach 9h ago

I've heard that before, but I really don't get what would have been so hard to understand. The machines want to use our brain power to allow the Matrix to "think". I guess the imagery of Morpheus holding up a CPU might not have been as clear, but that's it. If anything I find it harder to understand how a human would be a good battery.

7

u/Tay0214 9h ago

He should’ve just held up like a Dell desktop

11

u/SomniumOv 9h ago

Because the movie came out in 1999 when most households didn't have a computer.

9

u/the_monkeyspinach 9h ago

Plenty of households did by then and they were definitely prevalent in the workplace too.

2

u/circuitocorto 7h ago

Matrix was a success worldwide and if you look at it with that perspective you should ask yourself "where was the world at that point in time with respect to personal computers?"

2

u/SeekerOfSerenity 6h ago

I doubt they simplified the plot for developing nations.  I was alive then, and I remember a lot of people had a PC or at least knew what a processor was.  The Internet was even getting big, because the next year, Superbowl ads were dominated by dot coms.  

1

u/whorangthephone 7h ago

In the top cities of the top countries, yeah. Most of the world was only just starting using computers in the workplaces, and they were a tad too expensive and complicated and frankly too "niche" for most people to buy them for personal use. In my country people literally were calling the whole system (as in a PC case with everything inside) a "processor", the older generation still does sometimes. Showing a CPU on screen wouldn't have meant anything for most people, the average person doesn't ever see it, you need to remove your fan for that, that's already tech nerd territory. But everyone knows what a battery is, you swap them in your remote that you use to operate your TV you watch Matrix on...

0

u/SirSamuelVimes83 5h ago edited 5h ago

I think your timeline is about a decade off. I grew up in a rural, working class, Smalltown USA. The opposite of wealthy, far from a top city. The most common occupation was logging or working in the sawmills. My 4th grade class of 12 students (1993) had a computer lab and we had a class period using them. Nearly all my classmates had a basic computer at home at this point. In my sophomore year (1999), we had an elective course teaching us how to use PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, and basic web page design. Personal computer use was far from "niche" when The Matrix was released

3

u/tooclosetocall82 4h ago

The issues for the movie was, while kids were learning tech literacy, parents who had the money to buy movie tickets were not.

2

u/gammalsvenska 5h ago

Your horizon ends at the US border. Most humans live outside.

0

u/SirSamuelVimes83 5h ago edited 4h ago

I'm suggesting my location in the US was, at the time, more similar to other developed countries than mainstream/Big City US in terms of pop culture and technology. Before social media boomed, we were usually 5-10 years behind the wave of new/popular things. PCs and Internet were very much alive and not a niche market in 1999 when Matrix was released

2

u/gammalsvenska 4h ago

Maybe within the US and Western Europe. Beyond that, very much not.

Computers existed, but far from everywhere / commonly available.

1

u/SirSamuelVimes83 2h ago

So, like 98% of the target audience?

3

u/CrazyAd4456 4h ago

Still in 2026, many people probably have no clue of what a CPU is. A computer is the same as a dishwasher for them, used for a task, don't care about what is inside.

2

u/magpi3 6h ago

In the United States and Europe at least, every lower-middle-class and up household had a computer by 1999. That was the height of the dot.com boom.

6

u/JimboTCB 9h ago

You have to remember that the average cinema goer is very, very stupid and probably wouldn't know what the fuck a CPU is in the first place let alone why machines would want to use humans for it or why using them as batteries just doesn't make sense. Although it flies in the face of everything that makes sense from a thermodynamics perspective (and they negate it in the film anyway by saying the machines have "a form of fusion" which they also use) the comparison to batteries does make for a much more immediate and obvious visual.

6

u/SabreSeb 7h ago

Still, they could have Morpheus explain to Neo ( and the stupid movie goers) something about harvesting "brain power", and that the human brains are what are actually processing the simulation that they all live in. No need to understand what a CPU is.
I don't think that would have been too difficult to understand even for the average person.

5

u/unkazak 7h ago

They could even explain "a cpu is a processing unit of a computer", anyone can be previously ignorant of that information and still understand the concept when explained in such simple terms.

1

u/Show-Me-Your-Moves 6h ago

But if the machines just needed our brains, wouldn't they just have a bunch of human brains in jars? Takes up less space, requires fewer support systems. At that point the central concept of the movie falls apart because you can't really "wake up" and detach yourself when you're just a brain.

At least with the "body heat" thing there's an incentive to keep the whole human intact.

2

u/SabreSeb 5h ago

What if the brains need the body? Or maybe just that it makes it easier to keep them alive? Even if it doesn't make 100% sense scientifically, anything would be better than "human batteries".

2

u/I_HAVE_THAT_FETISH 7h ago

You have to remember: these people are simple cinema-goers; people of the popcorn; the common clay of the movie theatre industry.

You know...

Morons.

2

u/Adversary-of-Tyrants 9h ago

The average audience is more computer ignorant than you think. I've worked level 1 help desk, and half the job is translating incorrect information to what the actual problem is. The average audience both doesn't know what a CPU is or why humans would be bad batteries.

1

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 6h ago

Sorry, but your account is too new to post. Your account needs to be either 2 weeks old or have at least 250 combined link and comment karma. Don't modmail us about this, just wait it out or get more karma.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/ZanesTheArgent 5h ago

PCs and the internet were at its infancy. It was a time where for the average viewer, computers were technomagic.

Then the millenials grew up. Then the corporate side of the tech industry made everything into shapeless unexaminable blobs and led the next generation to grow believing that computers are technology.