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IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

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Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#81

Post by pnut »

GaryBluto wrote: post #63
ayaros wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a younger millennial. I'm always seeing homeless people in my city and it's an issue that I think about on a daily basis. Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things? So many people are in poverty, they can't afford basic necessities. The world is shitty. Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources , but it's still capital . It shou…

> Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources, but it's still capital. It should be spent on meeting people's basic human needs, not GPU power. It's capital that belongs to people and those people can do what they like with the money they earned. So many great scientific breakthroughs that saved tens of millions of lives would never have happened if you had your way.

Is that true, that it's money that belongs to people?

OpenAI isn't spending $1 trillion in hard earned cash on data centres, that is funny money from the ocean of financial liquid slushing around, seeing alpha.

It also certainly is not a cohort of accredited investors putting their grandchildren's inheritance on the line.

Misaligned incentives (regulations) both create and perpetuate that situation.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#82

Post by coliveira »

ayaros wrote: post #48
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have, though. Higher taxes on the rich, spend it on social programs.

Why is this so horrible. Put more resources in the hands of the average person. They will get pumped right back into the economy. If people have money to spend, they can buy more things, including goods and services from gigantic tax-dodging mega-corporations. Gigantic mega-corporations do enjoy increased growth and higher sales, don't they? Or am I mistaken?

Because government is always a fight about resources. More resources in the hands of common people and to make their lives better is less money in the hands of powerful corporations and individuals, be it in the form of higher taxes for the rich or less direct money going to their enterprises.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#83

Post by johnrob »

dotancohen wrote: post #70
johnrob wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invest in making food/shelter cheaper?

Food and shelter are cheaper than at almost any time in human history. Additionally, people have more variety of healthy foods all year long. No matter how cheap food and shelter are, there will always be people who can not acquire them. Halting all human progress until the last human is fed and sheltered is a recipe for stagnation. Other cultures handle this with strong family bonds - those few who can not acquire f…

Cheap depends on how we define the cost. In relative terms, food is more expensive than ever:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#84

Post by trenbologna »

ericmcer wrote: post #78
ayaros wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a younger millennial. I'm always seeing homeless people in my city and it's an issue that I think about on a daily basis. Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things? So many people are in poverty, they can't afford basic necessities. The world is shitty. Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources , but it's still capital . It shou…

The last 10 years has seen CA spend more on homelessness than ever before, and more than any other state by a huge margin. The result of that giant expenditure is the problem is worse than ever. I don't want to get deep in the philosophical weeds around human behavior, techno-optimism, etc., but it is a bit reductive to say "why don't we just give homeless people money".

In CA this issue has to do with Gavin giving that money to his friends who produce very little. Textbook cronyism

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#85

Post by QuercusMax »

newfriend wrote: post #51
ayaros wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a younger millennial. I'm always seeing homeless people in my city and it's an issue that I think about on a daily basis. Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things? So many people are in poverty, they can't afford basic necessities. The world is shitty. Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources , but it's still capital . It shou…

Technological advancement is what has pulled billions of people out of poverty. Giving handouts to layabouts isn't an ideal allocation of resources if we want to progress as a civilization.

Lots of people lose their housing when they lose employment, and then they're stuck and can't get back into housing. A very large percentage of unhoused people are working jobs; they're not all "layabouts".

We know that just straight up giving money to the poorest of the poor results in positive outcomes.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#86

Post by dogman144 »

beachy wrote: post #27
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #18

> Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said This doesn't seem correct to me, or at least is built on several shaky assumptions. One would have to 'refill' your hardware if: - AI accelerator cards all start dying around the 5 year mark, which is possib…

It's just the same dynamic as old servers. They still work fine but power costs make them uneconomical compared to latest tech.

Manipulating this for creative accounting seems to be the root of Michael Burry’s argument, although I’m not fluent enough in his figures to map here. But, commenting that it interesting to see IBM argue a similar case (somewhat), or comments ITT hitting the same known facts, in light of Nvidia’s counterpoints to him.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#87

Post by QuercusMax »

newfriend wrote: post #74
droopyEyelids wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if some of the homeless people are children or people who could lead normal lives but found themselves in dire circumstances? Some of us believe that keeping children out of poverty may be an investment in the human capital of a country.

The US already provides significant aid to those in poverty, especially children. We don't need to stifle innovation to reach some level of aid that bleeding hearts deem sufficient.

Do you really think that building giant datacenters full of accelerators that will never be used is "innovation"?

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#88

Post by QuercusMax »

panick21_ wrote: post #73
ayaros wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this so horrible. Put more resources in the hands of the average person. They will get pumped right back into the economy. If people have money to spend, they can buy more things, including goods and services from gigantic tax-dodging mega-corporations. Gigantic mega-corporations do enjoy increased growth and higher sales, don't they? Or am I mistaken?

I'm not saying you are wrong that some redistribution can be good, but your analysis is simplistic and ignores many factors. You can just redistribute and then say 'well people will spend the money'. That's literally the 'Broken Window' fallacy from economics. You are ignoring that if you don't redistribute it, money also gets spend, just differently. Also, the central bank is targeting AD, so you're not actually inc…

Stock buybacks don't build anything. They're just a way to take money from inside a company and give it to the shareholders.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#89

Post by rzerowan »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #18

> Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said This doesn't seem correct to me, or at least is built on several shaky assumptions. One would have to 'refill' your hardware if: - AI accelerator cards all start dying around the 5 year mark, which is possib…

I think its illustrative to consider the previous computation cycle ala Cryptomining. Which passed through a similar lifecycle with energy and GPU accelerators.

The need for cheap wattage forced the operations to arbitrage the where location for the cheapest/reliable existing supply - there rarely was new buildout as the cost was to be reimbursed by the coins the miningpool recovered.

For the chip situation caused the same apprecaition in GPU cards with periodic offloading of cards to the secondary market (after wear and tear) as newer/faster/more efficient cards came out until custom ASICs took over the heavy lifting, causing the GPU card market to pivot.

Similarly in the short to moedium term the uptick of custo ASICs like with Google TPU will definately make a dent in bot cpex/opex and potentially also lead to a market with used GPUs as ASICs dominate.

So for GPUs i can certainly see the 5 year horizon making a impact in investment decisions as ASICs proliferate.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#90

Post by coliveira »

panick21_ wrote: post #73
ayaros wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this so horrible. Put more resources in the hands of the average person. They will get pumped right back into the economy. If people have money to spend, they can buy more things, including goods and services from gigantic tax-dodging mega-corporations. Gigantic mega-corporations do enjoy increased growth and higher sales, don't they? Or am I mistaken?

I'm not saying you are wrong that some redistribution can be good, but your analysis is simplistic and ignores many factors. You can just redistribute and then say 'well people will spend the money'. That's literally the 'Broken Window' fallacy from economics. You are ignoring that if you don't redistribute it, money also gets spend, just differently. Also, the central bank is targeting AD, so you're not actually inc…

There are many ways of spending money in the population that don't include just "distribution of money", as it's portrayed nowadays. Child care, free and high quality schools, free transportation, free or subsidized healthcare, investment is labor-intensive industries, these are all examples of expenditures that translate in better quality of life and also improve competitiveness for the country.
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