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Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

bloomberg.com

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

#211

Post by zamalek »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #91
rsynnott wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lining up for whatever the next thing is. "Look, we know we said AR/VR was the next big thing in the late tens and LLMs were the next big thing in the early 20s, but quantum is the next big thing now. For real, this time!" (Not entirely sure what the next fad will be, but some sort of quantum computing thing doesn't feel unlikely. Lot of noise in that direction lately.)

Curiously, all of these three (VR/AI/QC) are limited by hardware. But AI is the only one that has seen meaningful progress by just throwing more contemporary hardware at it. Sure, future hardware might bring advancements to all of them. But if you're making an investment plan for the next quarter, the choice is pretty obvious. This is why AI rules the venture capitalist sector instead of fusion or other long term stu…

Of the three, QC is different in that it's not a solution looking for a problem. If we ever scale QC to the point where it can do meaningful work (the "if" is doing a lot of work there - per your point about hardware), then I don't see it fumbling like the other two have. We have immediate and pressing needs that we know how to solve with QC. The other two are very much research coming up with cool toys, and product fucking around so that they can find out what to use them for.

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

#212

Post by red-iron-pine »

nyeah wrote: post #139
infecto wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to tell others that then perhaps some introspection for yourself might be helpful. Comes across more as denial than constructive commentary. I do believe the benefit decreases the more senior or familiar the work is but there is still a noticeable benefit and I think it largely depends on the velocity and life cycle of the product. I think you get less benefit the slower the velocity or the more mature of…

I see a gap between "vastly more productive" and "noticeable benefit".

good shoes help me walk a bit faster, and for longer.

they don't let me walk at the pace of a SUV.

AI is like the good shoes. they help, and make many tasks a bit easier. but they can't make me into an SUV.

and if they can, then no programmers will have jobs. which is the end-state of this whole LLM thing as far as I can tell.

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

#213

Post by akomtu »

rsynnott wrote: post #84
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…

Lining up for whatever the next thing is. "Look, we know we said AR/VR was the next big thing in the late tens and LLMs were the next big thing in the early 20s, but quantum is the next big thing now. For real, this time!" (Not entirely sure what the next fad will be, but some sort of quantum computing thing doesn't feel unlikely. Lot of noise in that direction lately.)

Quantum AI will be the next buzzword, once AGI loses steam.

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

#214

Post by dboreham »

markus_zhang wrote: post #154
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah maybe we programmers should start doing that too. Why do we use Teams, Slack or even emails? We should submit our code to a mainframe and everyone is going to improve their skills too.

On punched cards.

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

#215

Post by dboreham »

ghaff wrote: post #113
qwertox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile huge orgs like the NHS run on fax I thought this was a German-only thing?

The healthcare system I largely use in the US was bought up by another larger system. They are now primarily on an electronic system (which for me is welcome) but some of the offices still use faxes as well.

I had a stint in healthcare software and can confirm the fax thing is real. That said, I had a hunch it's all cloud-hosted fax sending systems delivering to cloud-hosted fax-to-pdf systems. I challenged by colleagues to show me an actual fax machine and never had any takers.

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

#216

Post by dnissley »

lazide wrote: post #124
qgin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Bob" in this example is just some other random individual contributor, not some master of the universe. E.g. they would have the title "associate procurement specialist @ NHS" and join and interact on zoom calls with other people with that title in order to do that specific job.

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

#217

Post by dboreham »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #68
numbsafari wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with supply/demand, and everything to do with geopolitics.

You think they would spend 500B without thinking there will be any demand?

The 500B is just something to put on a press release.

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

#218

Post by rurp »

kamranjon wrote: post #149
mrtksn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case its coding real world apps that people use and pay money for. I no longer personally type most of my code, Instead I describe stuff or write pseudo code that LLMs end up converting into the real thing. It's very good at handling the BS part of coding but also its very good at knowing things that I don't know. I recently used it to hack a small bluetooth printer which requires its own iOS app to print, usin…

“Before AI I would have to study how Bluetooth works now I don't have to.” And “It's very good at handling the BS part of coding…” This is the part that I think is difficult in a team situation. Learning and understanding is the important part, and certainly isn’t BS. I understand that it really can make it seem like velocity has increased when you really are shipping things that more or less “work”, but it’s really…

The only part I would quibble with is the fear that superficial AI generated code becomes widespread. It's not that I think this won't happen, and I wouldn't want it on my team, but I think it could actually increase demand for competent software engineers.

I got into coding about a decade ago when cheap outsourcing had been all the rage for a number of years. A lot of my early experience was taking over very poorly written apps that had started off with fast development and then quickly slowed down as all of the sloppy shortcuts built up and eventually ground development to a halt. There's a decent chance LLMs lead to another boom in that kind of work.

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

#219

Post by treis »

sharpshadow wrote: post #165
thagsF wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Henry Ford would reply: "Who is going to buy the cars?" We have been living in a fake economy for quite some time where money is printed and distributed to the "tech" sector. Which isn't really "tech", but mostly entertainment (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, ...). Growth of the economy means nothing. The money that has been printed goes to shareholders. What the common man gets is inflation and job losses. If you wa…

A friend tried to tell me China has a real estate crisis, because the value of houses is dropping due to building to many and people are losing on their investments. I asked him if he is sure cheap and available housing is a crisis.

Everyone in the industry losing their shirts and going out of business is a crisis. It happened 15 years ago in the US and we still haven't made it back to mid 90s level of housing starts.

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

#220

Post by mixmastamyk »

bognition wrote: post #110
toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fellow degenerate gambler I see. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, trade with caution. Being early is the same as being wrong.

A common hypothesis for why Nvidia is so hot is because they have an effective monopoly on the hardware to train AI models and it requires a crap ton of hardware. With DeepSeek it’s been demonstrated you can get pretty damn for a lot cheaper. I can only imagine that there are tons of investors thinking that it’s better to invest their dollars in undercutting the costs of new models vs investing billions in hardware.…

A short position is always a gamble, because you could lose more than everything.
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