The energy cost of intelligence
What does intelligence cost in physical terms?
A framework for comparing the energy required for specific cognitive tasks, with performance, system boundaries, and measurement kept in view.
What change could unlock substantially more useful intelligence from existing compute?
01 / MOTIVATING OBSERVATION
The motivating analogy is the way wavelength multiplexing expanded the usefulness of installed optical fiber. It prompts a question about AI: where could better organization unlock capacity that is already present?
02 / STARTING CONTEXT
The investigation begins with published work on attention and conditional computation, then asks how routing, memory, reuse, and communication affect a complete system. The DWDM comparison is a prompt for inquiry, not an established equivalence.
03 / WORKING HYPOTHESIS
For a defined workload, reducing unnecessary computation or data movement may improve useful output per unit of hardware. Gains need to hold when latency, quality, and total system costs are included.
04 / PROPOSED INVESTIGATION
05 / WHAT WOULD CHALLENGE THE IDEA?
An improvement that shifts costs elsewhere, reduces quality, or fails outside a narrow benchmark does not establish a general efficiency gain.
STARTING LITERATURE
External work by other researchers provides context for this direction.
DOCUMENTING THE WORK
Papers, simulations, and video explanations will be linked as this investigation develops.
Visit the notebookWhat does intelligence cost in physical terms?
A framework for comparing the energy required for specific cognitive tasks, with performance, system boundaries, and measurement kept in view.
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