Energy is an interesting comparison. Perhaps we should look at $/energy unit, and compare those dollars to the full cost of hiring a human including time off and benefits and payroll taxes and everything. We should also consider that the human consumes a lot of energy that the AI does not: many truckers have PC's, TVs, consoles, etc in their truck and burn fuel to play video games during their off hours.
I don't think we're going to replace truck drivers any time soon, but I'd be surprised if in say 30 years the vast majority of trucking wasn't automated.
Human energy consumption is highly variable. Especially when you do cradle-to-grave cost analysis. Are we talking about an average american truck driver? Or the ideal high-efficiency truck driver that is raised to only drive trucks, grows on agaragar and undergoes early depowering after its working years?
There was a very good talk at NeurIPS this year that was comparing LLM training to amount of energy expended in building wonders of the world. I think this would’ve been a good thing to include too.
I don't think we're going to replace truck drivers any time soon, but I'd be surprised if in say 30 years the vast majority of trucking wasn't automated.