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Long Live the 'GPU Poor' – Open-Source AI Grants

a16z.com

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Re: Long Live the 'GPU Poor' – Open-Source AI Grants

#121
post #105

I'm one of the recipients of the AI grants, to support my work at fast.ai. I'm extremely grateful to a16z for their support. Here's some additional details based on questions I see in the comments: My grant covered the purchase of a Scalar server from Lambda Labs, which allowed me to configure a system with 8 previous-gen A6000 GPUs, partly also thanks to NVIDIA who has recently given me 3 of those cards, and Lambda…

Thanks for providing context Jeremy. Fast AI has done an admirable job in communicating its commitment to an ethical pursuit of AI advancement. Do you feel such a commitment aligns with the bellicose rhetoric found in a16z's vision? Here is Marc Andreessen in a recent essay...

"There is one final, and real, AI risk that is probably the scariest at all:

AI isn’t just being developed in the relatively free societies of the West, it is also being developed by the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China.

China has a vastly different vision for AI than we do – they view it as a mechanism for authoritarian population control, full stop. They are not even being secretive about this, they are very clear about it, and they are already pursuing their agenda. And they do not intend to limit their AI strategy to China – they intend to proliferate it all across the world, everywhere they are powering 5G networks, everywhere they are loaning Belt And Road money, everywhere they are providing friendly consumer apps like Tiktok that serve as front ends to their centralized command and control AI.

The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.

I propose a simple strategy for what to do about this – in fact, the same strategy President Ronald Reagan used to win the first Cold War with the Soviet Union.

'We win, they lose.'

Rather than allowing ungrounded panics around killer AI, “harmful” AI, job-destroying AI, and inequality-generating AI to put us on our back feet, we in the United States and the West should lean into AI as hard as we possibly can.

We should seek to win the race to global AI technological superiority and ensure that China does not."

I don't think one needs to think too hard about the grave consequences a mission of "We win, they lose" may have for human survival.

Source: https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/

Re: Long Live the 'GPU Poor' – Open-Source AI Grants

#122
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe build a FAQ for others on how to accomplish, or resources you can point people at?

I've done a version of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36632397 Let me know what you'd want to see added!

That was great! thank you.

One thing I cant glean ; What GPu/kit are preferred for which type of output?

Like chat vs imaging...

Do locally run models/agents have access to the internet?

Whats the best internet connected crawler version on can use?

Re: Long Live the 'GPU Poor' – Open-Source AI Grants

#123
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a version of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36632397 Let me know what you'd want to see added!

That was great! thank you. One thing I cant glean ; What GPu/kit are preferred for which type of output? Like chat vs imaging... Do locally run models/agents have access to the internet? Whats the best internet connected crawler version on can use?

1. I've updated the section now: https://gpus.llm-utils.org/cloud-gpu-guide/#so-which-gpus-sh... - that should answer it. Basically 1x 3090 or 1x 4090 is an ideal set up for stable diffusion, 1x A100 80GB is an ideal setup for llama 2 70b GPTQ (and you can use much smaller GPUs or even CPUs if needed, for smaller llama 2 models)

2. No, they don't have access to the internet unless you build something that gives them access

3. I'm not sure what you're asking

Re: Long Live the 'GPU Poor' – Open-Source AI Grants

#124
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They state the nature of their support in very clear terms: "We’ll support a small group of open source developers through grant funding (not an investment or SAFE note), giving them the opportunity to continue their work without the pressure to generate financial returns." Some of the recipients of financial support have described the nature of the agreement as well. > a16z didn't ask for any equity or any kind of q…

Ok so it is just marketing spend, and buying the relationships then.

You could choose to interpret it as marketing spend or "buying relationships", sure. For me, there's enough negativity in the world - I don't want to spend time imagining more.

And why would I? A16Z have already explicitly stated their intent: "a thriving open source ecosystem is essential to building [ai's] future" and "We’ll support a small group of open source developers through grant funding (not an investment or SAFE note), giving them the opportunity to continue their work without the pressure to generate financial returns."

There's not a lot of spin on this. They want to be a leader in AI so they're investing in the people who build the tools that they use in pursuit of their commercial goals.

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