"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Im tempted to just ask some AI Model to refute this with logic. XD
But heres my own:
No demand? Most people dont even know how nice new technology or ideas are! Or take Horses, who did much of our manual labor since ages.
Making the PC think not just do is very cool.
The PC isn't thinking. It's mindlessly copying.
...using gigawatts of power that aren't available on the grid
Remember folks, since the end of COVID another greedy cork sucker is crowned next billionaire every 30 hours.
The number of billionaires in the USA has nearly and will shortly eclipse double the number there were before 2020. How did they do that, you fucking know. By pretending they would die and their children would get AIDS if they didn't raise the price of every single product on the planet exorbitantly and without need to increase already skyrocketing year to year profitability. These greedy bastards not only did this, they want to kill all of us who they fleeced before we wake up to the facts.
TOO LATE
I'm going to be that guy and point out that LLM's are not really "AI", that's just the corporate buzzword but "AI" is a loosely defined thing.
I think we should all get better at calling them LLM's publicly to take some of the magic woo-woo away.
I think we should call it with the more appropriate acronym: Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences (SALAMI)
I agreed years ago, but it's too late now.
"Big Data", "Neural Net", etc etc, they keep changing the buzzword for this crap for the past decade.
AI just resonates with the public because everyone has seen Terminator movies. Your dipshit CEO of Buttplugs Inc has no clue what an LLM, or neural net is. But he knows what AI is and he delusionally believes it's going make Buttplug inc. more profitable in the future.
It's effective marketing.
The term "AI" today is almost like the term "computer" decades ago.
As in, "this new vehicle is more efficient than ever thanks to a new aerodynamic shape created not on the drawing board, but on the computer."
i saw my first hover board in back to the future, the pink one. now it’s that overpriced exploding segway.
at least the name segway was almost creative
profits that won't happen
I have yet to see speculation as to how the bubble survivors make a profit. At this point I think AI is being pushed to keep propping up the US economy.
That's a great question Shalafi! The answer is government mandated pillow talks to your AI companions. Would you like me to provide todays' topics in advance?
You're not alone in thinking that. The US economy is growing but all of that is allocated to 5 companies, and in any case the owners of that equity aren't a majority median income earners. We've essentially decoupled the economic health of the common person, who would actually spend on the bubble survivors, from the overall "strength" of the US economy.
An interesting discussion on that thought about halfway through this - https://www.ft.com/content/bd6545dc-41b7-42db-af77-b2f32a1c9ae1
This actually explains a few things for me.
I never considered that RAM and GPUs could be traded as futures, but obviously they can...
This also reminds me of the trader at a trading company in London who had to take delivery of 28000 tonnes of coal due to forgetting to sell a future he owned.
He only found out as the receptionist asked him to come down and sign for it and he saw barges of coal coming down the river:
If we have to play this bubble game, can we at least force them to build some renewable energy sources with their unlimited funds so when the bubble pops, we have some extra renewable energy available to the grid?
Pretty sure Trump banned woke energy
Wind and sun are for SISSIES, even if it's CHEAPER! Nuclear plants are not antifa-woke, but my pal A.Jones says it makes everyone GAY. Drill baby, drill!
It won’t affect energy prices, because the nuclear power plants they’re building to power their data centers are going to be up and running any minute now.
Just keep the golden investment teet flowing until it’s dry.
Aaaaaaany minute now.
The grift is so clear.
Bubble's gotta bubble.
So they can replace all workers. and won’t be able to make profit because they layed off all of the workers. Why do we need a government if they are investing all our resources in phasing us out? If you don’t work in our system you die so why are we allowing this again?
Because idiots think that if we let the super rich become ultra rich then they will somehow in turn become regular rich.
The rich have it going both ways. They have convinced a subset of the lower classes to fight amongst and blame each other. Meanwhile they very shortdightedly are maximizing profits (not from the lower classes anymore because they have essentially bled us dry) but from other rich people who want to invest to maximize profits.
They have forgotten that the only way capitalism remains sustainable over time is if they continue to both provide products and services lower class individuals will spend money on, and if they continue to pay those lower class individuals money so they have money to spend. Right now they're busy grifting each other and our government is too stupid to look to the future, realize that the bubble has to pop sometime, and realize what that will mean for the market, the tax system, the tax payers, and the populace at large.
This is class warfare for profits over literally everything and it is going to crash the economy probably sooner rather than later.
Like Ford stopping producing batteries for their own cars (byd says thanks) in order to convert the factory for datacenter-class batteries
Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things which only exist in potentia, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-Morpork is a product of the Patrician’s rules about baseless metaphors, the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality around Ankh, which is so thin that it’s as thin as a very thin thing. The net result is that trading in pork futures—in pork that doesn’t exist yet—led to the building of the warehouse to store it in until it does.
Terry Pratchett, Thud!
Listen, I'm with you, but the reason is hyper capitalist speculative greed. It could be anything we're talking about "ghee wiz price upon rice hath trippled during these trying times because some bloke in Nippon stamped some papers to offer part of next seasons crops and the king gobbled these up like tendies on a naked lady"
I mean, credit where credit's due. This is just their next gang rape horse and the fact that it's visibly dead for months isn't really relevant to them. The one that gags first will just get stuck with the bags after the seasonal bukkake festival
This is peak bubble type shit.
This is all just gambling with a bunch of cheaters. They can't use crypto schemes as much because people FINALLY figured out they were pump and dump scams .... so AI investment it is.
So what will it do to memory prices if the AI bubble pops right now?
Prices stay elevated but stop increasing, because, as we've learned from the "supply chain issues" of covid, prices must never come down even if the supposed cause of price increases is resolved.
Three ideas, one, memory chip makers pivot back to their usual lanes (maybe we get a glut and prices drop). Two, memory chip makers sink and bought by new memory chip makers (maybe more competition). Three, memory chip makers implode and machines are lost (production loss and prices shoot up). Any of these options will probably result in prices remaining the same sadly.
Is this a gross exaggeration, or is the entire SaaS-to-hardware supply chain under such deep speculation right now?
It's exaggerated, yes. It's not gross.
It's basically an arms race for a future AI war that probably won't happen.
Sort of like how armies were bankrupting themselves building battleships before WW1... which turned out to not be a sea war at all.
The fear 'losing out' on AI is making companies, and people, totally irrational. All the big players are paranoid that one of the other ones is going to 'get head' of AI market and become a monopoly, just like it was in the past with Google and search, or Apple and the iphone, etc. So crazy stupid expenditures and these massive data center plans now are considered a necessity.
But you are correct the AI demand... simple isn't there and probably won't materialize and the bubble will collapse.
all the big players are paranoid that one of the other ones is going to "get head"
Imagine being worried that someone else is getting a BJ.
The frustration is valid, but it’s less ‘AI is dumb’ and more ‘markets chasing hype create weird shortages.
This is how every ramp-up in a market works. It is called hedging. The promised sales volume at that higher price then let companies invest in higher supply.
The problem here is that none of only four companies which manufacture RAM don‘t want to compete for this demand, but instead share the price increase among each either in profit margins. (This is of course, because they don‘t believe in the AI hype, but nonetheless RAM manufacturing is an oligopoly, which is a problem in of itself.)
Someone wrote this, only to have their byline edited away.
Futures and unrealized capital gains are more addictive than nicotine
Well, if this does come to pass then we'll be getting a ton of cheap memory next year.
