alt Hacker NewsUsing your brain is so vastly more energy efficient, we might just only need half of that 30 GW capacity if fewer people had these leftpad-style knee-jerk reactions.
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Each person uses about 100W (2000kcal/24h=96W). Running all of humanity takes about 775GW.
Sure, using or not using your brain is a negligible energy difference, so if you aren't using it you really should, for energy efficiency's sake. But I don't think the claim that our brains are more energy efficient is obviously true on its own. The issue is more about induced demand from having all this external "thinking" capacity on your fingertips
While I don't know how more or less efficient it is, WolframAlpha works well for these sorts of approximations, and shows its work more clearly than the AI chatbots I've used.
A Gemini query uses about a kilojoule. The brain runs at 20 W (though the whole human costs 100 W). So, the human is less energy if you can get it done in under 50 seconds.