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Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

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Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#21

Post by rjh29 »

beernet wrote: post #12

It's not that easy. Access to enough compute is one thing. However, you also need a proper dataset (beyond Common Crawl and Wikipedia), excellent research expertise and engineering capabilities. So even if you throw money or free credits for cloud compute out there it will not be enough. We've seen this happen with EleutherAI who were not capable of reaching their initial target of "replicating" GPT-3 and could only…

There is Open Street Map (or Wikipedia for that matter). A large enough army of volunteers could produce or tag a dataset that rivals Google's data, but it would be a lot of work.

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#24

Post by badsectoracula »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #2

I’d donate if the model and code became open source afterwards like stable diffusion.

AFAIK while the code is open source, the Stable Diffusion model license isn't open source though as it has usage restrictions that you wouldn't find in real open source license.

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#25

Post by alexb_ »

I've often wondered why a service doesn't exist that allows you to rent out your graphics card for the large data processing needed for training models. Like mining bitcoin except you are doing something actually useful and getting paid actual money for it. Example:

- Company Alpha needs $40,000,000 worth of cloud computing for their training model - Company Beta provides them said cloud computing for $30,000,000 from their pool of connected graphics cards - Individuals can connect their computers to the Company Beta network and receive compensation for doing so. In total $20,000,000 is distributed.

Company Alpha gets their cloud computing done for cheap, Company Beta pockets the $10,000,000 difference for running a network, the individuals make money with their graphics cards, except this time it's actual United States Dollars. What am I missing here that would make this type of business unfeasible?

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#26

Post by mdorazio »

asim wrote: post #19
inglor wrote: post #9

It's no different from any other type of server I think? Crowdfunding compute comes with a lot of security and privacy concerns and often if you're building a product putting that part of it in the hands of someone reliable is preferable. It depends on what part of what you're building is your core intellectual property and such. I'll ask back: what products would you build on top of a crowdfunded-compute GPT like mo…

Personally? One I'm interested in is a personal assistant that has access to 100+ APIs that I can command solely with text e.g ability to schedule future tasks, ability to get answers to questions around real world events and data available through APIs, ability to combine a lot of these things. What Alexa could/should have been. Separately, examination of religious and historic tests in alternate languages providing…

It’s not clear to me why your first example needs AI. If you have a defined text query setup (maybe with prefixes depending on what you want) the rest is basic case-based API selection, no?

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#28

Post by londons_explore »

alexb_ wrote: post #25

I've often wondered why a service doesn't exist that allows you to rent out your graphics card for the large data processing needed for training models. Like mining bitcoin except you are doing something actually useful and getting paid actual money for it. Example: - Company Alpha needs $40,000,000 worth of cloud computing for their training model - Company Beta provides them said cloud computing for $30,000,000 fro…

ML typically needs decently high bandwidth and low latency links between computers too.

Sometimes the algorithm or the data is commercially sensitive.

Those are the two main reasons a 'rent out my GPU while I sleep' scheme wouldn't work.

Neither are insurmountable though.

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#29

Post by smoldesu »

alexb_ wrote: post #25

I've often wondered why a service doesn't exist that allows you to rent out your graphics card for the large data processing needed for training models. Like mining bitcoin except you are doing something actually useful and getting paid actual money for it. Example: - Company Alpha needs $40,000,000 worth of cloud computing for their training model - Company Beta provides them said cloud computing for $30,000,000 fro…

Company Alpha will probably just call up AWS or Azure and sleep easy. Company Beta can't really compete because they have to pay both themselves and their contributors; AWS could sell ML compute at-cost and still turn a profit.

What made this type of business feasible/attractive for cryptocurrency is that the miners were Company Beta. There wasn't two mouths to feed or two pockets to line, just a direct and transparent reward scheme for people donating compute. Projects like Folding@Home have leveraged world-scale networks before, but I'm not aware of anyone who's managed to monetize it.

Re: Ask HN: Can you crowdfund the compute for GPT?

#30

Post by WithinReason »

alexb_ wrote: post #25

I've often wondered why a service doesn't exist that allows you to rent out your graphics card for the large data processing needed for training models. Like mining bitcoin except you are doing something actually useful and getting paid actual money for it. Example: - Company Alpha needs $40,000,000 worth of cloud computing for their training model - Company Beta provides them said cloud computing for $30,000,000 fro…

This exists already, but I can't find a link.

Edit: I was probably thinking of vast.ai

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