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After the Bubble

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21–30 of 86 posts

Re: After the Bubble

#21

Post by jameslk »

marcusb wrote: post #18

> The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that. I think the first part of this is probably true, but I don’t think everyone knows it. A lot of people are acting like they don’t know it. It feels like a bubble to me, but I don’t think anyone can say to a certainty that it is, or that it will pop.

It’s a non sequitur, like saying “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”

I’m guessing the author meant it tongue in cheek but really meant “everyone I know or follow knows it’s a bubble”

Re: After the Bubble

#22

Post by jsnell »

> Nobody who is doing this is willing to come clean with hard numbers but there are data points, for example from Meta and (very unofficially) Google.

The Meta link does not support the point. It's actually implying a MTBF of over 5 years at 90% utilizization even if you assume there's no bathtub curve. Pretty sure that lines up with the depreciation period.

The Google link is even worse. It links to https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/datacenter-g...

That article makes a big claim, does not link to any source. It vaguely describes the source, but nobody who was actually in that role would describe themselves as the "GenAI principal architect at Alphabet". Like, those are not the words they would use. It would also be pointless to try to stay anonymous if that really were your title.

It looks like the ultimate source of the quote is this Twitter screenshot of an unnamed article (whose text can't be found with search engines): https://x.com/techfund1/status/1849031571421983140

That is not merely an unofficial source. That is just made up trash that the blog author just lapped up despite its obviously unreliable nature, since it confirmed his beliefs.

Re: After the Bubble

#23

Post by MattGrommes »

dehrmann wrote: post #5

> When the early-electrification bubble built, we were left with the grid. And when the dot-com bubble burst, we were left with a lot of valuable infrastructure whose cost was sunk, in particular dark fibre. The AI bubble? Not so much. Except for the physical buildings, permitting, and power grid build-out.

I was also wondering if the GPUs that die and need to be replaced actually become inert blocks of fused silicon or do they work at half speed or something? A data center full of half speed GPUs is still a lot of computing power waiting for somebody to use.

Re: After the Bubble

#24

Post by giancarlostoro »

MattGrommes wrote: post #23
dehrmann wrote: post #5

> When the early-electrification bubble built, we were left with the grid. And when the dot-com bubble burst, we were left with a lot of valuable infrastructure whose cost was sunk, in particular dark fibre. The AI bubble? Not so much. Except for the physical buildings, permitting, and power grid build-out.

I was also wondering if the GPUs that die and need to be replaced actually become inert blocks of fused silicon or do they work at half speed or something? A data center full of half speed GPUs is still a lot of computing power waiting for somebody to use.

> computing power waiting for somebody to use.

This is how "serverless" became a thing btw.

Re: After the Bubble

#25

Post by dragonwriter »

kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

There is an AI bubble just like there was a dotcom bubble; the fact that it is a real technology with real uses we with world changing long-term impacts does not mean that the recent investment hype will not soon be recognized as excessively exuberant given the actual payoffs to investors and the timelines on which they will be realized.

(And putting masses of people out of work and and thereby radically destabilizing capitalist societies, to the extent it is a payoff, is a payoff with a bomb attached.)

Re: After the Bubble

#26

Post by mr_mitm »

marcusb wrote: post #18

> The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that. I think the first part of this is probably true, but I don’t think everyone knows it. A lot of people are acting like they don’t know it. It feels like a bubble to me, but I don’t think anyone can say to a certainty that it is, or that it will pop.

No one can see a bubble. That's what makes it a bubble.

Re: After the Bubble

#27

Post by marcusb »

mr_mitm wrote: post #26
marcusb wrote: post #18

> The GenAI bubble is going to pop. Everyone knows that. I think the first part of this is probably true, but I don’t think everyone knows it. A lot of people are acting like they don’t know it. It feels like a bubble to me, but I don’t think anyone can say to a certainty that it is, or that it will pop.

No one can see a bubble. That's what makes it a bubble.

That's the conventional wisdom, undercut by the fact that people have guessed (and bet their fortunes) that previous bubbles were bubbles well before they popped.

Its more accurate to say that bubbles rely on most people being blind to the bubble's nature.

Re: After the Bubble

#28

Post by kec »

kevin061 wrote: post #2

There is no AI bubble. The housing bubble was about artificially inflated housing assets. People have been calling Bitcoin a bubble since it was introduced. Has it popped? No. Has it reached the popularity and usability crypto shills said it would? Also no. AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled in…

Being a bubble does not mean there is no value in the thing, only that investment is outpacing the intrinsic value of the thing which is inherently unsustainable and will cause a collapse at some point. This also does not imply that the collapse will lead to a future value of 0.

Re: After the Bubble

#29

Post by pantalaimon »

jsnell wrote: post #22

> Nobody who is doing this is willing to come clean with hard numbers but there are data points, for example from Meta and (very unofficially) Google. The Meta link does not support the point. It's actually implying a MTBF of over 5 years at 90% utilizization even if you assume there's no bathtub curve. Pretty sure that lines up with the depreciation period. The Google link is even worse. It links to https://www.toms…

On top of that, Google isn't using NVIDIA GPUs, they have their own TPU.

Re: After the Bubble

#30

Post by mr_mitm »

marcusb wrote: post #27
mr_mitm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one can see a bubble. That's what makes it a bubble.

That's the conventional wisdom, undercut by the fact that people have guessed (and bet their fortunes) that previous bubbles were bubbles well before they popped. Its more accurate to say that bubbles rely on most people being blind to the bubble's nature.

And how many people have guessed wrong? There will always be people betting on bubbles, some ought to be right.
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