zlacker

I appreciate you engaging, but I'm not sure power how would be the limiting factor. Assuming an average of 1kW of compute needed per robot (for reference, Tesla's AI4 is ~200W, rumors say 800W for AI5, nvidia B200 is ~1kW), that's nothing compared to the amount of energy we use for locomotion (a car eats like 20kW at 60mph).

>>iknows+(OP)
> Assuming an average of 1kW of compute needed per robot

1kW would be hell on the battery, and at the same time make the robot a space heater even while standing still which in turn creates new problems if you want to replace all labour with them.

Further, to my point about moving the compute out of the machine and mains-powering them, the current global electricity supply and demand is about 350W/person. We're currently already using all of that, including for industrial purposes.

To see the effect of demand exceeding supply, observe that the data centres were starting to cause local problems with only 4-5% of the USA's national power use.

Even if the current literally-exponential growth of each of PV and wind continues, it doesn't change my timelines: even with 31% per year compounding growth for PV, and given what we're doing with it already even without androids, it takes a sufficiently long time to build out sufficient electricity for androids that we're not likely to have enough spare electricity to run an economically relevant number of them (say, equivalent to 10% of the current labour force) before we improve both the compute hardware and the algorithmic efficiency of the software running on it.

>>ben_w+dW
Oh this is a political problem then, not physical. China adds as much capacity annually as the US totals. We will deploy more as the industry scales, I don’t expect it to be a bottleneck.

I agree 1kW is a lot for a humanoid, I can’t predict how much of that will be necessary. People run 1kW PCs at home though so not that bad.

>>iknows+lp3
> China adds as much capacity annually as the US totals.

This sounds like you misunderstood my point.

This isn't a China-renewables-vs-US-renewables problem, it's the total electrical supply worldwide from all sources that's only around 350 W/person.

With regard to renewables, the point is that *even though they're growing fast, even when baking in the assumption that we continue to deploy more at a sustained compounding genuinely exponential rate, then it's still a decade away from being relevant*. At which point, the effect of a combined efficiency boost to hardware and software also becomes relevant.

> People run 1kW PCs at home though so not that bad.

*Some* people run 1kW PCs. Even in the USA with relatively high energy supply per capita, were *everyone* to do this it would either cause brownouts, or increase energy prices by (best guess) something like 5x to reduce demand by the same degree elsewhere in the system.