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Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

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Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#121

Post by ta1243 »

skydhash wrote: post #115
ta1243 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I hear is anecdotal statements from people claiming LLMs have made them some percent more productive. Yet few actually say how or demonstrate it. It's very difficult to measure productivity of most people, certainly most people in office jobs, so while you can have a gut feeling that you're doing better, it's no more measurable than pre-AI individual productivity measurement was

It’s not really about objective measurements, but practical applications. Like try this in the following manner and compare it to your previous workflow. Sensible advices like the ones found in The Pragmatic Programmer.

Sure, so it's always going to be annecdotal. That doesn't mean the benefits don't exist, just means they can't be objectively measured. Just like we can't objectively measure the output of a single knowlege worker, especially output on a single day

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#122

Post by llm_trw »

alexvitkov wrote: post #88
geuis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I hear is anecdotal statements from people claiming LLMs have made them some percent more productive. Yet few actually say how or demonstrate it. For the last year, I've tried all sorts of models both as hosted services and running locally with llama.cpp or ollama. I've used both the continue.dev vscode extension and cursor more recently. The results have been frustrating at best. The user interface of the tools…

If LLM chatbots are making you vastly more productive in a field, you are in the bottom 20% of that field. They're still useful tools for exploring new disciplines, but if you're say a programmer and you think ChatGPT or DeepSeek is good at programming, that's a good sign you need to start improving.

Linus Trovalds: bottom 20% coder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHHT6W-N0ak&pp=ygUMTGludXMgQ...

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#123

Post by dfxm12 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value - https://futurism.com/microsoft-ceo-ai-generating-no-value Bit of a click bait title, but it certainly seems like the realization is setting in that the hype has exceeded near term realistic expectations and some are walking back claims (for whatever reason; honesty, derisking against investor securities suits, poor capital allocation, etc). Nadella appea…

Did they tell the M365 sales/marketing teams about this? My users get bombarded with sales pitches, new free trials and other commms about how wonderful copilot is. It's almost a full time job to manage people's expectations around this...

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#124

Post by lazide »

qgin wrote: post #61
djtango wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if there is fast takeoff AGI, he thinks human messiness will slow implementation Five years ago during covid all these clunky legacy businesses couldn't figure out a CSV let alone APIs but suddenly with AGI they are going to become tech masters and know how to automate and processize their entire operations? I found it very amusing that at the turn of the decade "digitalisation" was a buzzword as Amazon was ap…

I think you don’t have widespread adoption until AI takes the form of a plug-and-play “remote employee”. You click a button on Microsoft Teams and hire “Bob” who joins your team org, gets an account like any other employee, interacts over email, chat, video calls, joins meetings, can use all your software in whatever state it’s currently in. It has to be a brownfield solution because most of the world is brownfield.

Hah, that isn’t a brownfield solution.

These orgs could hire someone who could solve these issues right now (and for the last decade) if they would allow those people to exist in their org.

The challenge is precisely that those people (or people with that capability) aren’t allowed to exist.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#125

Post by bronco21016 »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #112
markus_zhang wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact most of the industries out there are still slow and inefficient. Some physicians only accept phone calls for making appointments. Many primary schools only take phone calls and an email could go either way just not their way. It's just we programmers who want to automate everything.

“ only takes phone calls for appointments” is a huge selling point for a physicians office. People are very tired of apps.

I’d far prefer a well done app. It’s so frustrating doing a back and forth of dates when trying to make an appointment.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#126

Post by lenerdenator »

qgin wrote: post #22

A few things from the Dwarkesh interview with Satya: * He sees data center leases getting cheaper in near future due to everyone building * He’s investing big in AI, but in every year there needs to be a rough balance between capacity and need for capacity * He doesn’t necessarily believe in fast takeoff AGI (just yet) * Even if there is fast takeoff AGI, he thinks human messiness will slow implementation * It won’t…

> human messiness will slow implementation

If by "messiness" he means "the general public having massive problems with a technology that makes the human experience both philosophically meaningless and economically worthless", then yeah, I could absolutely see that slowing implementation.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#127

Post by nokun7 »

So, Microsoft’s move to ditch leases for “a couple hundred megawatts” of data center capacity, as noted in TFA, is a pretty intriguing shift—and it’s not just a random cutback. Per some reports from Capacity Media and Analytics India Magazine, it looks like they’re pulling some of their international spending back to the U.S. and dialing down the global expansion frenzy. For context, that “couple hundred megawatts” could power roughly 150,000 homes, (typical U.S. energy stats) so it’s a decent chunk of capacity they’re letting go.

IMO it's not a full-on retreat—Microsoft’s still on track to drop $80 billion this fiscal year on AI infrastructure, as they’ve reaffirmed. But there’s a vibe of recalibration here. They might’ve overcooked their AI capacity plans, especially after being the top data center lessee in 2023 and early 2024. Meanwhile, OpenAI—Microsoft’s big AI partner—is reportedly eyeing other options, like Project Stargate with SoftBank, which could handle 75% of its compute needs by 2030 (per The Information report). That’s a potential shift in reliance that might’ve spooked Microsoft into rethinking its footprint.

Also it seems they're redirecting at least some costs - over half that $80 billion is staying stateside, per Microsoft’s own blog, which aligns with CEO Satya Nadella’s January earnings call push to keep meeting “exponentially more demand.” It’s a pragmatic flex—trim the fat, dodge an oversupply trap, and keep the core humming. Whether it’s genius or just good housekeeping, it shows even the giants can pivot when the AI race gets too hot.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#128

Post by ghaff »

asadhaider wrote: post #30
turnsout wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple can pull off "Siri with context," it will completely annihilate Microsoft's first mover advantage. They'll be left with a large investment in a zero-margin commodity (OpenAI).

Unfortunately Siri remains near useless at times even with Apple Intelligence™®

Just like all the other voice assistants.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#129

Post by qgin »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #109
mattlondon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why are these sort of orgs slow and useless? I don't think it is because they have made a conscious decision to do so - I think it is more than they do not have the resources to do anything else. They can't afford to hire in huge teams of engineers and product managers and researchers to modernize their systems. If suddenly the NHS had a team of "free" genuinely phd-level AGI engineers working 24/7 they'd make a…

It's not a resource problem; everyone inside the system has no real incentive to do anything innovative; improving something incrementally is more likely to be seen as extra work by your colleagues and be detrimental to the person who implemented it. What's more likely is a significantly better system is introduced somewhere, NHS can't keep up and is rebuilt by an external. (Or more likely it becomes a inferior syste…

I think this is where the AGI employee succeeds where other automation doesn’t. The AGI employee doesn’t require the organization to change. It’s an agent that functions like a regular employee in the same exact system with all of its inefficiencies, except that it can do way more inefficient work for a fraction of the cost of a human.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#130

Post by toberoni »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value - https://futurism.com/microsoft-ceo-ai-generating-no-value Bit of a click bait title, but it certainly seems like the realization is setting in that the hype has exceeded near term realistic expectations and some are walking back claims (for whatever reason; honesty, derisking against investor securities suits, poor capital allocation, etc). Nadella appea…

Nadella is looking for the world to grow at 10% due to AI enhancement, like it did during the industrial revolution. That seems like a low bar because it already is- it's just not equally distributed yet. My own productivity has grown far more than 10% thanks to AI, and I don't just mean in terms of dev. It reads my bloodwork results, speeds up my ability to repair a leak in my toilet tank, writes a concise "no I won…

Annual growth rates during the Industrial Revolution where way lower than 10%. In the 18th century it was well below 1%, during the 19th century it was on average at 1-1.5% (the highest estimates go up to 3% annual growth for certain decades close to 1900).[0][1][2]

Some regions or sectors might have experienced higher growth spurts, but the main point stands: the overall economic growth was quite low by modern standards - even though I don't think GDP numbers alone adequately describe the huge societal changes of such sustained growth compared to agrarian cultures before the Industrial Revolution.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20071127032512/http://minneapoli... [1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-has-growth-ch... [2] https://academic.oup.com/ereh/article/21/2/141/3044162

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