Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#121

Post by alkonaut »

ezoe wrote: post #120
alkonaut wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of these issues can be worked around by random validation, sumbitting all/some blocks to multiple people (redundant calculation). This is no different from existing efforts such as SETI@Homr and Folding@Home. The difference being the compensation which increases the incentive for fraud. The key to the trust issue is not trusting the remote computer, because you can’t. You have to validate somehow.

That solution requires that all computation is deterministic and the result of computation can be easily comparable. I think not all the computation is that simple.

It only assumes that including incorrect results isn’t catastrophic for the end result, and that using mostly correct results will give a mostly correct outcome. If that isn’t the case I’d compute every block 2..n times instead.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#122

Post by sho »

Donzo wrote: post #118
sho wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m pretty sure that the Golem team is doing something right I'm not at all convinced that the golem team have any particular insight to solve this obvious and common problem that everyone else doesn't have. And frankly I think that the overhead of running unnecessary infrastructure will render them price-uncompetitive to any reasonable centralised provider. In short, I predict they will fail. But eh, they raised U…

>In short, I predict they will fail. I guess that's why we're sitting in different camps. One advantage that the Golem team has over a centralized, proprietary solution is the open nature of the project: https://github.com/golemfactory/golem The Golem team doesn't necessarily need to solve every problem. Being built on top of the Ethereum Network is advantageous. If they make an appealing, open platform with potentia…

> I guess that's why we're sitting in different camps.

Indeed, doesn't mean I don't want to hear the other side's point of view though!

Open source is not going to save them. They have one main problem - how to tell if people did the work they claim they did? If centralised, they can "test" new users or perhaps periodically check up on long term users by secretly allocating duplicate work and verifying its content. How can you do that in public? The blockchain is actually working against them.

And who really needs a cryptographically secure attestation that on march 25th 2018, user XYZ completed ML shared 456.7? This is a level of audit logging appropriate for a bank and basically nothing else. All you need is availability accounting of some sort. It's not rocket science. I couldn't write the client for this app but I sure as hell could write the back end and I wouldn't even think of using a blockchain. Make no mistake, their choice of technologies is for buzzword compliance, not technical necessity - a very bad sign.

There is also no need for the GNT. It solves no problem and users could just as easily be compensated in ETH or anything else. Sure, it's a funding mechanism, fine. We still haven't figured out how ICOs should even work.

Despite all the rigmarole, they have a product they need to sell like any other startup: rent us your GPU/CPU for $x/hr. Because of their overhead, I predict they will easily be outcompeted by centralised providers. People are not going to use golem over another, better-paying alternative just from the goodness of their hearts. And I cannot see any way how golem can be structurally more efficient than a centralised solution.

All said, I'm not as optimistic as you. Not like I want them to fail though, good luck to them!

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#123

Post by runeks »

Houshalter wrote: post #36
dpwm wrote: post #7

There's a lot of comments on that reddit thread about how awesome this would be as a service. But there's a big problem of trust with this for ML. How do I know you actually ran what I paid you for and not just generated random data that looks right in the shape I wanted it? You could farm it out to two people and if the results disagree, then payment is decided by a third. But then you've just doubled the (paid) wor…

You don't verify every task. You verify some percent of them at random. And blacklist the people who cheat the system (Maybe with some leeway because random memory errors are a thing with consumer GPUs.)

How do you blacklist people who cheat when a proxy server and a freshly generated public key can make them appear as a new node in the network?

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#124

Post by Donzo »

sho wrote: post #122
Donzo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In short, I predict they will fail. I guess that's why we're sitting in different camps. One advantage that the Golem team has over a centralized, proprietary solution is the open nature of the project: https://github.com/golemfactory/golem The Golem team doesn't necessarily need to solve every problem. Being built on top of the Ethereum Network is advantageous. If they make an appealing, open platform with potentia…

> I guess that's why we're sitting in different camps. Indeed, doesn't mean I don't want to hear the other side's point of view though! Open source is not going to save them. They have one main problem - how to tell if people did the work they claim they did? If centralised, they can "test" new users or perhaps periodically check up on long term users by secretly allocating duplicate work and verifying its content. H…

Well I sure do appreciate you going out of your way to explain your perspective to me.

Just a couple more responses:

1. The use of blockchain is not for buzzword compliance. Julian (CEO) is a longtime Ethereum supporter/developer. This project has really been in development since 2014 or so, long before blockchain was "buzzy." So the use of blockchain here is not for grabbing cash. They actually think it's a better (perhaps harder) way forward.

2. Not only does the token allow investors to directly invest in the project, it also allows developers to "print" tokens that can be locked behind smart contracts. That way developers can be rewarded for reaching project goals with bowls of their own dog food. Not bad to eat when it's pretty much "real" money.

3. The decentralized and distributed nature of the project will allow the Golem Network to achieve goals and execute code that no centralized competitor could achieve/run. I'll leave it as a thought exercise for you to speculate what those goals/codes might look like.

Thanks for the engagement. It's great to test my beliefs through debate. Time will be the true arbitrator here though. Best wishes.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#125

Post by davewasthere »

boulos wrote: post #65

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and launched Preemptible VMs). Cool! Like you, I wish people would make productive use of spare cycles. Can I suggest you add a note comparing this to BOINC/gridcoin as well? I think your marketplace is a better idea, but because of the security implications dgacmu pointed out downthread, it shouldn’t be treated lightly. Also, I really like your white paper ( https://vectordash.com…

My concern is this would be a great vector for some form of State-sponsored deployment of a sneaky rootkit which is then embedded in everyone's GPU.

That said, I'd much prefer to see GPU cycles (and power usage) going towards scientific endeavors rather than the current crypto-mining boom.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#126

Post by Houshalter »

runeks wrote: post #123
Houshalter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't verify every task. You verify some percent of them at random. And blacklist the people who cheat the system (Maybe with some leeway because random memory errors are a thing with consumer GPUs.)

How do you blacklist people who cheat when a proxy server and a freshly generated public key can make them appear as a new node in the network?

The same way any other website deals with bot abuse. You give extra scrutiny to new accounts, require captchas, flag suspicious email providers and bank accounts, and block IP ranges that correlate highly with abuse. I don't think you would need to go anywhere near that far though. Because it's pretty cheap to do lots of verification constantly, and fake users wouldn't last very long.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#127

Post by ric2b »

jonhohle wrote: post #59
sangnoir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty much letting people with GPUs become a sort of 'mini-cloud provider'. There's no job queue or fancy distributing computing setup. We just let you SSH into a container on someone's computer, and pay for the time used. I had the same idea a few days ago - but in my head, the process would be wrapped up as a "cryptocurrency" where the AI researchers pay real money and the "proof of work" is useful/"real" w…

> the first is that how do you verify that the hardware owner is running the real job an not NOOP'ing and sending false results? Consensus. Have _n_ nodes perform the same work (if it’s deterministic), and only accept (and pay) if all the nodes match - or at least the nodes that were part of the majority I don’t think this would be considerably different from SETI or folding@home, which have been going on for around…

> Consensus. Have _n_ nodes perform the same work (if it’s deterministic), and only accept (and pay) if all the nodes match - or at least the nodes that were part of the majority

Soudns vulnerable to sibyl attacks.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#128

Post by ric2b »

jonhohle wrote: post #59
sangnoir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty much letting people with GPUs become a sort of 'mini-cloud provider'. There's no job queue or fancy distributing computing setup. We just let you SSH into a container on someone's computer, and pay for the time used. I had the same idea a few days ago - but in my head, the process would be wrapped up as a "cryptocurrency" where the AI researchers pay real money and the "proof of work" is useful/"real" w…

> the first is that how do you verify that the hardware owner is running the real job an not NOOP'ing and sending false results? Consensus. Have _n_ nodes perform the same work (if it’s deterministic), and only accept (and pay) if all the nodes match - or at least the nodes that were part of the majority I don’t think this would be considerably different from SETI or folding@home, which have been going on for around…

> Consensus. Have _n_ nodes perform the same work (if it’s deterministic), and only accept (and pay) if all the nodes match - or at least the nodes that were part of the majority

Sounds vulnerable to sibyl attacks.

Re: Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies

#129

Post by lostmsu »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #37
lostmsu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is (though I think they don't use it): TPM based host attestation.

The microsoft secureboot golden key got leaked, anything based on secureboot as a root of trust is 100% blown wide open. https://web.archive.org/web/20170604013028/https://rol.im/se...

I am not sure this depends on TPM. Care to share a link?
Post reply on HN