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xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

martinalderson.com

341–350 of 580 posts

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#341
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does one lease something? To provide value equal or better to the cost, no?

If I lease an apartment for two years, that's not an investment.

In accounting terms it’s not an investment it’s an operating expense or in your example a personal expense, but if you leased a property and operated a business (ie an AirBnB for an apartment) it could be considered as part of an investment as it’s a means to make a profit.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#342
post #42

Same idea expressed by a commenter here 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48426082

I'll add that I said xAI seems to be dropping out of the AGI race: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214042 Makes sense. Very difficult to catch OpenAI and Anthropic now since their flywheel of generate revenue, use revenue to buy more compute, train a smarter model with more compute, made it hard to compete. Being able to supply compute makes more sense for SpaceXAI if you can't compete in SOTA LLMs anymore.

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Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#343
AFAIK the Colossus data center was more or less "brute force" when it comes to building a datacenter fast -- ie it was very expensive and they cut some pretty ugly corners (their generators are "temporary" to get around regulations, but I don't see how they can possibly be "temporary" and they create a massive amount of pollution compared to other power sources). The reason I point that out is the article mentions that SpaceX is "better" at building huge datacenters. I think this might be an overstatement -- they're just more willing to throw massive amounts of money and bend as many rules as possible.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compute is about to come an appreciating asset in the near-term, and it some ways it already is. The frontier labs are shifting from pricing grounded in the price of compute, to pricing grounded in the intelligence provided, or more specifically the economic value of that intelligence downstream. The margins on that allow them to pay a hefty premium on compute and still come out ahead. As they buy more compute at hig…

There is zero evidence of this shift in pricing occurring. It’s still a dream which seems unlikely

Dream? It is a nightmare that computers aren't getting significantly more efficient anymore.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes. Does everyone still find it interesting to go over this point every time about how it's not literally a person with human reasoning?

Uh, only when people don't seem to understand it, or try to personify it. Which is quite often.

What about when they ask how you can take gold at IMO and solve research-level math problems without reasoning?

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#348

Elon is brilliant when it comes to hardware. But unfortunately with xAI, he went on a firing spree, PayPal Mafia style, just like with Twitter when he bought it, shortly before doing another hiring drive, and failing to hire software engineers at scale. The datacenter deals came after. But now, the man who promised the world an AI system that defends free speech and is “pro-human”, is instead selling to his competito…

He didn't go on a firing spree at xAI. A lot of talented people who could go anywhere else and work with anyone else in the AI field did just that.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the pro account for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. They all have various strengths and weaknesses. My favorite is still ChatGPT, then Gemini/Claude, then Grok. Grok often feels 1-2 generations behind the competition in general use, but it has three things that I love: 1. It seems to be the best at understanding current events. Maybe due to X integration, or some other tool call optimization in the backend?…

Opus 4.8 has made huge jumps in being less sycophantic. I see it pushing back on ideas a lot, and that's very helpful when you're evaluating options.

It’s more like Opus wants you to do its job for it. I feel that amount of time when I tell it “no, you do that” increases with each new version.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#350
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are no dark GPUs This might not be true. Someone was comparing Nvidia's production rate with known data center capacity, and they do not match. Their conclusion was that people (possibly even Nvidia) were hoarding GPUs- in the very short term this might be a good strategy, but GPUs go EOL fast. There are other stories about paused datacenter builds that match with this. TSMC is definitely fully allocated, base…

All that means is that there's a bottleneck at the data center layer. When he says "dark GPUs" he's saying that there are no dark DEPLOYED GPUs. This is a reference to the 1990's dot com bubble where internet infrastructure companies overbuilt network capacity, leading to the term "dark fiber". That was an indicator of a bubble because it showed that capacity was larger than demand. OP is saying that this is specific…

> ...GPUs are actually getting more valuable because demand is so great, something that basically never happens. Even older chips have become more valuable.

Huh, anybody want to buy a GTX 680? Or even a formerly-SLI'd pair?

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