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Google/Rulesofthumb

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Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#11
post #6

There is nothing new or dystopian about this, a tradeoff between capital expenditure and labour has existed since ... forever. Do I buy expensive tool X or get buy with cheap ones that make the work take longer or be less precise? Do I buy fancy machine Y or pay 10 people to do it manually? The only new development with AI is that this was traditionally limited to relatively manual or repetitive processes, but is now…

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work.

You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work. You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy. Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds of years ago

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#13
post #6

There is nothing new or dystopian about this, a tradeoff between capital expenditure and labour has existed since ... forever. Do I buy expensive tool X or get buy with cheap ones that make the work take longer or be less precise? Do I buy fancy machine Y or pay 10 people to do it manually? The only new development with AI is that this was traditionally limited to relatively manual or repetitive processes, but is now…

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

Yeah, it threatens the livelihoods of the people who are moreso ‘in charge’ of what is classified dystopian vs basic economics. Go figure.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#16
post #5

> costs of fixed assets Minor quibble unrelated to the main content of the post: the measures are not fixed costs of assets, but a blend of depreciation and the operating cost of power usage for those assets. Sort of a regular snapshot of an average daily accounting cost, so to speak (which is reasonable). And this was cost to Google, not taking into account what Google could make by charging Cloud customers for the…

Yup that's right.

Also a pet peeve of mine, people constantly screwed up the units. "10 SWEs" is rate (cost per time), same as "10 TB of RAM", but "SWE-years" is cost (ie dollars). Many design documents use these inconsistently.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work. You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy . Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds o…

Used to, just as I imagine some other jobs were secure in the economy 100 years ago.

I personally don’t know what impact AI will have on the job market, but is is not going to be an overnight revolution.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are never secure in your job. Its just that it happens less often to white collar work. You know, for other people you are the other people that things happen to.

Nobody is ever secure in their particular job, but white collar workers used to be secure in the economy . Now, AI threatens to upend a lot of white collar work without creating any new kinds of jobs to replace them. Anybody who says that AI will create more jobs than it replaces is just divining the future based on the impact of totally unrelated technologies (steam engine, electric motors) on the economy hundreds o…

I'd look at this from a different perspective. Why does one hire a janitor? Is it because you're incapable of cleaning a bathroom, mopping, or sweeping? No, it's because you have different priorities for your own time. Even if software capable of creating software, flawlessly to specification, was created - software developers would still have a job. Creating those specifications (and handling ambiguities), integrating the resultant product, dealing with ever-changing specifications, and a zillion other things will still be around, and probably always will be.

If anything, software based solutions (LLMs or perhaps something more domain specific and accurate, eventually) will just broaden the labor pool for software. So you'll see more people enter the field which will depress wages, but there will also probably consequently be more jobs.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#19
post #3

> Given the choice between having a team of 3 people working under me or 1000 dedicated H100s for my work, I’d have to think for a little bit. But the exact numbers are important. An H100 is ~$2/hour [1], so 1000 is $16M/year (24/7). Even if Google gets a massive internal discount that's still way more than 3 people's total cost. If you have to choose between 16 (highly paid, senior) people or 1000 H100s would you ha…

purchase price != sales price. Very unlikely that Google pays $16M for a single H100. Amazon has it at $44k: https://www.amazon.com/Tesla-NVIDIA-Learning-Compute-Graphic...

Better reread the post. It was about renting GPUs. 16M for 1000 H100 per year. So i guess 44k at Amazon would make that 44M Dollar.

Re: Google/Rulesofthumb

#20
post #6

There is nothing new or dystopian about this, a tradeoff between capital expenditure and labour has existed since ... forever. Do I buy expensive tool X or get buy with cheap ones that make the work take longer or be less precise? Do I buy fancy machine Y or pay 10 people to do it manually? The only new development with AI is that this was traditionally limited to relatively manual or repetitive processes, but is now…

Dystopia is when white collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force. Basic economics is when blue collar workers are no longer secure in the labor force

There was a time in the 80 and then 00s when this was the case, when big steel/auto was laying off, but it hasn't really seemed like that for decades. That was globalization (Japan then China and the rest of Asia), but now it feels like a trope. What happens to a plumber, electrician, or welder/machinist that loses their job? They get another one. They are in demand. Heck, even truckers are in demand. Does it take time to train, yeah... but it's not $100k for a degree. Are you gonna become a billionaire? Probably not unless that coin/lottery pans out.

Unions are stronger than the last 40 years especially at auto/medical/trucking. Likely, deglobalization is going to bring some production home, but really the question is, why dismiss or even relish worker insecurity and inefficiency?

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