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Also, these two networks achieves vastly different results, per watt consumed. A NN creates a painting in 4s on my M2 MacBook; an artist in 4 hours. Are their used joules equivalent? How many humans would it take to simulate MacOS?

Horsepower comparisons here are nuanced and fatally tricky!

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Humans aren't able to project an image from their neurons onto a disk like ANNs can, if they could it would also be very fast. That 4 hour estimate includes all the mechanical problems of manipulating paint.

What software are you using for local NN generation of paintings? Even so, the training cost of that NN is significant.

The general point is valid though - for example, a computer is much more efficient at finding primes, or encrypting data, than humans.

The cost of training a human from birth is pretty high, especially if you consider their own efforts over the years. And they don't know a fraction of what the LLMs know. (But they have other capabilities!)

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