Google has simply launched a report detailing how a lot vitality its Gemini apps use for every question. In complete, the median immediate—one which falls in the midst of the vary of vitality demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electrical energy, the equal of operating a regular microwave for about one second. The corporate additionally offered common estimates for the water consumption (5 drops per question) and carbon emissions related to a textual content immediate to Gemini.
It’s probably the most clear estimate but from a Huge Tech firm with a preferred AI product, and the report contains detailed details about how the corporate calculated its remaining estimate.
Earlier this yr, MIT Know-how Evaluate printed a complete sequence on AI and vitality, at which era not one of the main AI corporations would reveal their per-prompt vitality utilization. Google’s new publication, eventually, permits for a peek behind the scenes that researchers and analysts have lengthy hoped for. Learn the complete story.
—Casey Crownhart
I gave the police entry to my DNA—and possibly a few of yours
Final yr, I added my DNA profile to a non-public genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked “Sure” to permit the police to go looking my genes.
In 2018, police in California introduced they’d caught the Golden State Killer, a person who had eluded seize for many years. As soon as the police had “matches” to some kin of the killer, they constructed a big household tree from which they plucked the possible suspect.
This course of, known as forensic investigative genetic family tree, or FIGG, has since helped clear up lots of of murders and sexual assaults.
However I wasn’t actually pushed by some urge to seize distantly associated serial killers. Reasonably, my spit had a much less gallant and extra quarrelsome motive: to troll privateness advocates whose fears round DNA I feel are overblown and unhelpful. By giving up my saliva for inspection, I used to be going in opposition to the view that an individual’s DNA is the individualized, sacred textual content that privateness advocates typically declare. Learn the complete story.
