For my assumed human performance of 10^15 FLOP/​s, and human basal metabolic power of 80 W, the computational energy efficiency (operations per unit energy) of humans is 12.5 k GFLOP/​J (= 10^15/​80). This is 5.00 times (= 12.5*10^3/​(2.5*10^3)) that of NVIDIA B100 (released on 15 November 2024), which is the ML hardware on Epoch AI’s database with the highest computational energy efficiency. Epoch AI estimates the computational energy efficiency of ML hardware has increased 30 % per year, as is illustrated below. At this rate, ML hardware will reach the computational energy efficiency of humans in 6.13 years (= LN(5.00)/​LN(1 + 0.3)). As a result, digital welfare per unit energy consumption will soon be similar to human welfare per unit energy consumption if digital welfare per FLOP is similar to human welfare per FLOP.
Computational energy efficiency tends to increase with performance, as is illustrated by the data below collected by Epoch AI. I assume organisms with a smaller individual mass tend to have lower performance. So I think humans have a higher computational energy efficiency than animals, and that these have a higher one than microorganisms.
For my assumed human performance of 10^15 FLOP/​s, and human basal metabolic power of 80 W, the computational energy efficiency (operations per unit energy) of humans is 12.5 k GFLOP/​J (= 10^15/​80). This is 5.00 times (= 12.5*10^3/​(2.5*10^3)) that of NVIDIA B100 (released on 15 November 2024), which is the ML hardware on Epoch AI’s database with the highest computational energy efficiency. Epoch AI estimates the computational energy efficiency of ML hardware has increased 30 % per year, as is illustrated below. At this rate, ML hardware will reach the computational energy efficiency of humans in 6.13 years (= LN(5.00)/​LN(1 + 0.3)). As a result, digital welfare per unit energy consumption will soon be similar to human welfare per unit energy consumption if digital welfare per FLOP is similar to human welfare per FLOP.
Computational energy efficiency tends to increase with performance, as is illustrated by the data below collected by Epoch AI. I assume organisms with a smaller individual mass tend to have lower performance. So I think humans have a higher computational energy efficiency than animals, and that these have a higher one than microorganisms.