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What's slowing down the AI buildout

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Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#51

Post by surgical_fire »

user43928 wrote: post #50
surgical_fire wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you pay API prices? Or are you on some of those plans that are deeply unprofitable? I am not even sure if API prices are actually profitable, but they certainly aren't as unprofitable as the subscription plan users. Either way, that's why you don't have access. It has nothing to do with capacity constraints.

We do not know whether subscription plans are unprofitable at all. Some estimates suggest that this is the case only for the heaviest users. Many seem to confuse API prices with the actual cost to serve the models, and thus reach the conclusion that subscriptions must be deeply unprofitable. Anthropic is officially citing capacity constraints with the intent to bring the Fable model back to subscriptions plans as soo…

> We do not know whether subscription plans are unprofitable at all.

That's pretty much certain. It's sort of cute when people like to pretend otherwise.

> Many seem to confuse API prices with the actual cost to serve the models, and thus reach the conclusion that subscriptions must be deeply unprofitable.

I don't make that mistake. I actually suspect that the actual costs may be higher than the API prices. I think those may still be subsidized.

> Anthropic is officially citing capacity constraints with the intent to bring the Fable model back to subscriptions plans as soon as capacity allows.

Yeah, I don't think they are being truthful at all.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#52

Post by leonidasrup »

vasco wrote: post #39
linkregister wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unit economics for renewables coupled with storage are excellent. I agree we should reform nuclear regulation to allow new nuclear plants to pencil out. I disagree that we should discount the value of renewables.

Solar and wind take up a bunch of space and generate a bunch of waste after the panels are decommissioned, plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. With 5 nuclear stations per country you could cleanup so much of Europe.

The environmental damage caused by "clean" power sources is done mostly in countries which are far from Europe, so it's not much discussed in Europe.

Like:

Copper. "As the world shifts to wind energy and electric cars, demand for the conductive metal has increased. But mining copper brings its own environmental hazards"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-minin...

Impacts of lithium mining on water stressed regions in Chile

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/01/c...

Impacts of rare earth refining in China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/business/china-rare-earth...

silicon tetrachloride from solar production

https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=831

Europe should not outsource it's ecological impact to developing countries.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#53

Post by user43928 »

onion2k wrote: post #47
user43928 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot currently access Fable class models, I am out of usage credits. Anthropic is removing these larger models from personal plans at the end of the week to focus on selling it to enterprise users. Putting these more intelligent new models into the hands of more people seems very worthwhile to me.

I don't think Anthropic are doing that because they don't have enough compute capacity. If we had 100* more datacentres the message would still be the same - they're focusing on selling Fable access to enterprise users because that's what makes them more money.

Either the cost to serve this larger model is so high that they cannot offer any reasonable usage quota for it at subscription prices, or they really do not have the capacity.

I think that it might well be true. The Opus models had capacity issues on many occasions too. Can the larger model even be served on all of the hardware they have, or only a subset?

It would not surprise me if growing enterprise demand threatens capacity, making it impossible for Anthropic to offer the model in subscriptions at this time, even though they could do so at a profit.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#54

Post by dawnerd »

leonidasrup wrote: post #52
vasco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind take up a bunch of space and generate a bunch of waste after the panels are decommissioned, plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. With 5 nuclear stations per country you could cleanup so much of Europe.

The environmental damage caused by "clean" power sources is done mostly in countries which are far from Europe, so it's not much discussed in Europe. Like: Copper. "As the world shifts to wind energy and electric cars, demand for the conductive metal has increased. But mining copper brings its own environmental hazards" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-minin... Impacts of lithium mining on water…

And the person you replied to probably doesn’t realize spent nuclear fuel has really no where to go other than long term storage.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#55

Post by nibbleyou »

rayiner wrote: post #14
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how expensive energy helps us "upgrade civilization".

Its only expensive because its been regulated to death. In terms of potential energy output in a given area its tops.

Unregulated nuclear energy is only going to show us how unsafe it is.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#56

Post by leonidasrup »

cobbzilla wrote: post #12

Cheap ubiquitous distributed power systems will change the world in many weird ways. Watch small modular nuclear offer home installation for ~$reasonable and getting cheaper every year. Fast forward 20 years from the advent of essentially infinite energy results in WWIII and a new “Great Detente” but only after all the assholes have wreaked all the havoc they can. There are dark days ahead but ultimately a brighter f…

There were some crazy ideas for nuclear powered cars, but there are hard physical limits how small you can make a nuclear reactor.

1. Smaller the nuclear reactor is more neutron leakage you get. Each neutron which escapes a nuclear reactor is a neutron which can not be used to sustain the chain reactor. To compensate this you have to put more fissionable U-235 isotope into the reactor and as a result you need higher enriched nuclear fuel. A nuclear reactor in nuclear submarine can have the size of a dining table but it's running on nuclear fuel enriched to a weapon grade enrichment.

2. Even a small nuclear reactor with few kW thermal output needs a thick and heavy radiation shielding. This is not problem for power plant, or nuclear powered submarine, or nuclear powered ship. But the shielding requirement were problem for nuclear powered airplanes or trains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

In case of the mobile ML-1 experimental nuclear reactor, built as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program, extensive shielding was omitted in favor of a personnel exclusion zone of 500 feet (150 m) while in operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1

Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the first artificial nuclear reactor, didn't have shielding. But, to keep the dose of ionizing radiation for the staff within reasonable limits, it operated only for very short time periods and the total output of CP-1 was only few Watts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#57

Post by constantius »

dawnerd wrote: post #54
leonidasrup wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environmental damage caused by "clean" power sources is done mostly in countries which are far from Europe, so it's not much discussed in Europe. Like: Copper. "As the world shifts to wind energy and electric cars, demand for the conductive metal has increased. But mining copper brings its own environmental hazards" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-minin... Impacts of lithium mining on water…

And the person you replied to probably doesn’t realize spent nuclear fuel has really no where to go other than long term storage.

They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot.

FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or 5km3 of waste per year.

For comparison, German landfills can accommodate 70M metric tons per year.

France, a country famous for its investment into nuclear, is not covered in nuclear waste, and does not seem to have any issue disposing of it safely.

Nuclear has its disadvantages, but painting the many people who advocate for it on HN as delusional or ignorant is not very respectful.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#58

Post by [deleted] »

walrus01 wrote: post #43
fragmede wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already let people have cars and those things are crazy dangerous! No one should be allowed anything, ever, until we bubble wrap everything in the world to be perfectly safe!

Well, we already have strict background checks, licensing and regulations for a scenario such as if a person wants start a home based business manufacturing and storing C4, Semtex or similar at their rural property. If the idea is to start handing out nuclear reactors for peoples' houses, the possible damage that could be done is far greater. No matter how well packaged it is or designed to be consumer friendly.

[deleted]

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#59

Post by jqpabc123 »

matwood wrote: post #41
defrost wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is opposing renewable energy? The current US admin: Trump’s Multi-Pronged Attack on Renewable Energy https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?par... but they are slowly being beaten back: Trump admin abandons fight against wind energy as clean energy output surges - https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/trump-admin-abandons... The Trumpian adventures in Iran have wrong footed his fossil fuel b…

He hates wind turbines because he simply doesn't like how they look, and couldn't stop them next to one of his golf courses. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo

And he hates solar because???

If you look at the overall picture, it's clear that he opposes anything not carbon based. And cost isn't a rational reason for it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/20/trump-says-us-will-not-appro...

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#60

Post by dawnerd »

constantius wrote: post #57
dawnerd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the person you replied to probably doesn’t realize spent nuclear fuel has really no where to go other than long term storage.

They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot. FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or…

Solar doesn’t produce that much waste either and that was the point. Just because you don’t see the nuclear waste doesn’t mean it isn’t sitting there somewhere. The person was acting as if clean energy is dirty via its waste. For the record I’m all for nuclear - it’s insane we’ve regressed so much and not invested into more. But it’s also insane we’re not taking more advantage of green energy where we can.
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