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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

#251

Post by kridsdale1 »

mikesurowiec wrote: post #233
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…

I expect data centers will become more expensive precisely because everyone is building at the same time. Supply chain crunch

Temporary. During their operating and depreciating long tail phase the over supply will drive down costs for users. Like fiber cables.

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

#252

Post by markus_zhang »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #229
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.

Today I spent 55 minutes in a physical store trying to get a replacement for two Hue pendant lights that stopped working. The lights had been handed in a month ago and diagnosed as "can't be repaired" two weeks ago. All my waiting time today was spent watching different employees punching a ridiculous amount of keys on their keyboards, and having to get manual approval from a supervisor (in person) three times. I am…

Yeah. I hope software engineers slow down a bit. We are good enough. There is no need to push ourselves out of jobs.

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

#253

Post by hedora »

rangestransform wrote: post #225
hedora wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why AMD’s software side gets so much flack these days. For everything other than AI programming, their drivers range from fine to best in class. I have an AMD minipc running linux that I use for steam gaming, light development, etc. The kernel taint bit is off. There is one intel device on the pci/usb buses: wifi/bt, and it’s the only thing with a flaky driver in the system. People have been complaining abou…

Nobody who controls the purse strings cares about the kernel taint bit if their model doesn’t train, if they’re burning developer time debugging drivers, if they have to burn even more dev time switching off of cuda, etc. If AMD really cared about making money, they would’ve sent MI300s to all of the top CS research institutions for free and supported rocm on every single product. Investing any less than nvidia, the…

As I said, other than AI. The management made a big bet on crypto when nvidia made a big bet on AI.

That didn’t work out all that well in the medium term (it did in the short term), though it gave them runway to take a big chunk of intel’s server market.

Whether or not that was a good move, it’s not evidence of some engineering shortcoming.

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

#254

Post by OutOfHere »

aresant wrote: post #185

- This is a proper MSFT resource allocation commentary, not an industry wide canary in coalmine - MSFT CapEx is up 45% YoY, positioning for inference dominance - MSFT is prioritizing AI inference for millions of customers over massive AI training for OpenAI - Losing inference demand risks clients moving to AWS/GCP - MSFT taking bet that industry overbuild will lead to more attractive leasing terms in future vs owning…

Huh. It has everything to do with OpenAI planning to move away from Microsoft datacenters to its own datacenters.

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

#255

Post by ta1243 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #98
ta1243 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's assume robotics become to a extremely high level, everything humen work can be reduced to 1/100 with help of robots, what will happen next? We work 35 hour years instead of 35 hour weeks?

Lol, ever the optimist I see.

It's always worth reminding people that wealth accumulation in the insanely rich isn't the only option

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

#256

Post by heresie-dabord »

qgin wrote: post #132
heresie-dabord wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the transcript of the interview (podcast) with Dwarkesh? https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/satya-nadella Because if so, > He doesn’t necessarily believe in fast takeoff AGI (just yet) the term "fast takeoff AGI" does not appear in the transcript.

Some paraphrasing on my part, but what he does say is at odds with fast takeoff AGI. He describes AI as a tool that gradually changes human work at a speed that humans adapt to over time.

Given that you invented the term in your paraphrase, what do you mean by "fast takeoff AGI"?

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

#257

Post by ein0p »

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…

In fact I don't think he believes in the takeoff of AGI at all, he just can't say it plainly. Microsoft Research is one of the top industry labs, and one of its functions (besides PR and creating the aura of "innovation") is exactly this: to separate the horseshit from things that actually have realistic potential.

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

#258

Post by ein0p »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #20

Meanwhile: "Apple Says It Will Add 20k Jobs, Spend $500B, Produce AI Servers in US" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-24/apple-say... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43158168

I have serious doubts about this. Consider that Apple has somewhere around 2 billion users (a very, very optimistic estimate). This would be $250 per user - an utterly ridiculous number to spend on a set of features than nobody even uses. I think this is creative accounting to impress Trump and stave off the tariffs until his term ends.

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

#259

Post by Terr_ »

kyle_grove wrote: post #150
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.

Honestly, I think the mode that will actually occur is that incumbent businesses never successfully adopt AI, but are just outcompeted by their AI-native competitors.

And some, both new and old, will collapse after severely misjudging what LLMs can safely and effectively be used for.

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

#260

Post by Terr_ »

jajko wrote: post #136
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.

Completely unusable in any bank, or almost any organization dealing with data secrecy. You have complex, often mandatory processes to onboard folks. Sure, these can be improved but hiring some 'Bob' would be far from smooth sailing. Big enough corps will eventually have their own trusted 'Bobs' just like they have their own massive cluster farms (no, AWS et al is not a panacea and its far from cheap&good solution). G…

Not to mention that if Bob works as the current overhyped technologies do, it will be possible to bribe him by asking him to translate the promise of a bajillion dollars into another language and then repeat it back looking fort deciding on his next steps.
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