Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#31

Post by smaddox » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #15

Chronic51 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demand for AI and ML is increasing faster than the number of qualified graduates and workers. This is not true for semiconductors.

I see, but won't demand likely increase in the near future, given that we're hitting the limits of silicon?

There's plenty of PhD's working in semiconductor materials and devices. The US Gov is currently funding lots of research into so called 2D materials, e.g. graphene and MoS2. Personally, I'm skeptical that any of it will ever find anything more than tangential commercial application, e.g. graphene as a semi-transparent, high mobility conductor.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#32

Post by ArkyBeagle » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #25

There is a conflict of values to consider here: Do we we place a higher value on preventing relative poverty in the United States or extreme poverty around the world? """Poverty rates started to collapse towards the end of the 20th century largely because developing-country growth accelerated, from an average annual rate of 4.3% in 1960-2000 to 6% in 2000-10... China is responsible for three-quarters of the achieveme…

I think that Americans place a higher value on preventing extreme poverty around the world.

When faced with picky eaters, before around 1970, parents all over the USA would use the cliche that "children are starving in China."

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#33

Post by graycat » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

kelukelugames wrote: post #2

I majored in circuits because back then that's where the money and talent went in Silicon valley. Many of my classmates have since switched to software. The few remaining IC and fab people make pennies compare to the programmers. They also have PhDs to our BS and Master degrees. Software seems more robust but I don't trust myself to make predictions.

IMHO: Deliver products/services can get paid for. For this, move to new areas with no competition, that is, move products/services forward. For this, use new, powerful, valuable technology.

For that, broadly, supply new, valuable information. For that, take in available data, manipulate it, and report the new information as the results.

So, with all this data, find where some new, valuable information will make a good, new product/service. Then to have the first good or a much better offering, do use much more powerful data manipulations. For that, the secret is, and the candidates are, object oriented programming, processors with 1000+ cores, processors with clocks at 50 GHz+, new programming languages, new computer architectures exploiting, say, solid state disks addresses as a slower version of main memory, processors communicating with optical instead of electrical signals, quantum processors, massive parallelism of the cloud, original derivations with theorems and proofs in applied math exploiting appropriate advanced prerequisites, and may I have the envelope please [drum roll], and the winner is -- applied math!

Sorry 'bout that. Here the applied math is replacing the current ubiquitous elementary techniques, intuitive heuristics, fitting to large data sets, and copying what was long done manually.

This answer will not serve everyone or please everyone, but IMHO it is the most promising, single path forward.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#34

Post by krrrh » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

bubbleRefuge wrote: post #20

luso_brazilian wrote: post #9

> "There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”…

It can also be spectacularly successful . Although it wasn't a jobs program, WWII and its aftermath, driven by the state and centrally planned, resulted in great economic prosperity -perhaps unprecedented prosperity. Why can't we have a WWII on infrastructure, green energy, science funding, pollution cleanup, transportation, hyper-loops ?

It has been argued by many that WWII was not an economic high point in the lived experiences of most citizens. Even in America which faced almost no destruction of its territory and infrastructure there was severe rationing of basic commodities, durables, and food. For a large number of people, the war years were a downgrade in lifestyle from even late depression standards.

The economy did do well after the war, but you could also attribute that to delayed purchases as spending money on new homes, automobiles, and all sorts of goods was finally possible. This combined with a much larger labour pool as some women remained in the workforce, while many families who had delayed child-rearing started families and needed to earn and spend to support that. The post-war boom years were marked by a huge reduction of central planning and government spending. Most Keynesians at the time were actually predicting a return to deep recession because of this, and the opposite happened.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#35

Post by bedhead » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

luso_brazilian wrote: post #9

> "There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”…

Well put. Job creation as a goal is sort of like when public company CEO's have revenue as a goal. Look, if all you want is revenue, that's easy - we can buy companies, underprice business, do all sorts of uneconomic stuff, etc. Same goes for jobs...if all you want is someone working, we can do that pretty easily. While I understand the noble impulse to target job creation, unfortunately it leads to a lot of incentive misalignment. The real goal is creating value, or wealth.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#36

Post by smaddox » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #28

luso_brazilian wrote: post #9

> "There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”…

I think there is a significant confluence among those who find prosperity and purpose through jobs to conflate the concepts of employment and purpose. That to not have a job is to not have a purpose, and vice versa. If we had a planned economy built around peak employment, we would have many fewer entrepreneurs and many more, as you say, hole diggers. Socially we already do that. We have created a gargantuan advertis…

Indeed. I think this is a strong argument in favor of basic income. If the risk of an enterprise failing were separated from the risk of not being able to eat next week, then we would have far more entrepreneurs.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#37

Post by zardo » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

bubbleRefuge wrote: post #20

luso_brazilian wrote: post #9

> "There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”…

It can also be spectacularly successful . Although it wasn't a jobs program, WWII and its aftermath, driven by the state and centrally planned, resulted in great economic prosperity -perhaps unprecedented prosperity. Why can't we have a WWII on infrastructure, green energy, science funding, pollution cleanup, transportation, hyper-loops ?

>Although it wasn't a jobs program.

Exactly, it's not that big investments are bad, it's that doing them for the sake of providing jobs could mean employing people for the sole purpose of giving them a handout and wasting their time. You might as well just send them a check and let them have their time to raise their kids or... whatever.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#38

Post by p_monk » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

Adam Smith was making this same argument the only time he ever used the term "invisible hand." Smith assumed (incorrectly) that capitalists would always prefer their own domestic markets. For Smith, his conception of capitalism was good because it offered the best chance at achieving equality. However, globalization of capital has proven that his underlying assumptions were incorrect, so it may very well be that Smith today would have been seen alternatives to capitalism as better suited to provide equality. I believe Smith's beliefs would have led him to be something like what we call a "market socialist" these days.

The original passage from Wealth of Nations:

"He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#39

Post by matchagaucho » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

I love Andy, but it can be difficult to reconcile this article with the pro-globalization message in his book "High Output Management".

Had Intel outsourced the manufacturing of their memory chips during their "scale-up" phase, it's conceivable that they may have established more "partners" and less "competitors"... similar to what Apple has accomplished today with iPhone manufacturing.

Re: Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley

#40

Post by ArkyBeagle » Sat, Mar 26, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #28

luso_brazilian wrote: post #9

> "There was room for improvement, he argued, for what he called “job-centric” economics and politics. In a job-centric system, job creation would be the nation’s No. 1 objective, with the government setting priorities and arraying the forces necessary to achieve the goal, and with businesses operating not only in their immediate profit interest but also in the interests of “employees, and employees yet to be hired.”…

I think there is a significant confluence among those who find prosperity and purpose through jobs to conflate the concepts of employment and purpose. That to not have a job is to not have a purpose, and vice versa. If we had a planned economy built around peak employment, we would have many fewer entrepreneurs and many more, as you say, hole diggers. Socially we already do that. We have created a gargantuan advertis…

I'm not sure it's an ... axiomatic ( meaning just made up out of whole cloth ) assumption that doing meaningful things for other people is part of a path to happiness.

It may have the advantage of being true.

It does not mean that it's the only condition for happiness ( it is necessary but not sufficient ) , but I know of no good assault on this idea. Adam Smith's "to be loved and to be lovely" exists, and is deeply imbedded.

The advertising/media industrial complex problem is much more profound. But in order to propagate criticisms of it you'd sort of need the advertising/media industrial complex to get those ideas out. Still, Adam Curtis documentaries exist, the work of Marshall MacLuhan and Vance Packard and others exist.

Of these, Adam Curtis seems to have taken the thing on most directly. And it was very funny watching "Mad Men" pull its punches.