Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 985 posts

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#261

Post by mrguyorama »

amluto wrote: post #68
ayaros wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a younger millennial. I'm always seeing homeless people in my city and it's an issue that I think about on a daily basis. Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things? So many people are in poverty, they can't afford basic necessities. The world is shitty. Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources , but it's still capital . It shou…

From what I’ve read, addressing homelessness effectively requires competence more than it requires vast sums of money. Here’s one article: https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-homeless-t... Note that Houston’s approach seems to be largely working. It’s not exactly cheap, but the costs are not even in the same ballpark as AI capital expenses. Also, upzoning doesn’t require public funding at all.

Wasn't houston's "approach" to buy bus tickets to California from a company that just resold commodity bus tickets and was owned by the governors friend and charged 10x market price?

The governor of Texas bragged about sending 100k homeless people to california (spending about $150 million in the process).

>in the Golden State, 439 people are homeless for every 100,000 residents – compared to 81 in the Lone Star State.

If I'm doing my math right, 81 per 100k in a state of 30 million people means 24k homeless people. So the state brags about bussing 100k homeless people to California, and then brags about only having 24k homeless people, and you think it's because they build an extra 100k houses a year?

The same math for California means that their homeless population is 175k. In other words, Texas is claiming to have more than doubled California's homeless population.

Maybe the reason Texas can build twice as many homes a year is because it literally has half the population density?

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#263

Post by tehjoker »

jamesbelchamber wrote: post #72
myaccountonhn wrote: post #17

> In an October letter to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recommended that the US add 100 gigawatts in energy capacity every year. > Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said. And people think the clima…

If we moron our way to large-scale nuclear and renewable energy rollout however..

There's a reason Trump is talking about invading Venezuela (hint: it's because they have the largest oil deposits).

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#264

Post by SchemaLoad »

wordpad wrote: post #216
pharos92 wrote: post #199

I find it disturbing how long people wait to accept basic truths, as if they need permission to think or believe a particular outcome will occur. It was quite obvious that AI was hype from the get-go. An expensive solution looking for a problem. The cost of hardware. The impact on hardware and supply chains. The impact to electricity prices and the need to scale up grid and generation capacity. The overall cost to so…

Just like .com bust from companies going online, there is hype, but there is also real value. Even slow non-tech legacy industry companies are deploying chatbots across every department - HR, operations, IT, customer support. All leadership are already planning to cut 50 - 90% of staff from most departments over next decade. It matters, because these initiatives are receiving internal funding which will precipitate o…

The "legacy" industry companies are not immune from hype. Some of those AI initiatives will provide some value, but most of them seem like complete flops. Trying to deploy a solution without an idea of what the problem or product is yet.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#265

Post by getnormality »

A decade ago, IBM was spending enormous amounts of money to tell me stuff like "cognitive finance is here" in big screen-hogging ads on nytimes.com. They were advertising Watson, vaporware which no one talks about today. Are they bitter that someone else has actually made the AI hype take off?

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#266

Post by bitexploder »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #229
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #176

One thing we saw with the dot-com bust is how certain individuals were able to cash in on the failures, e.g., low cost hardware, domain names, etc. (NB. prices may exceed $2) Perhaps people are already thinking about they can cash in on the floor space and HVAC systems that will be left in the wake of failed "AI" hype

From the article: ""It's my view that there's no way you're going to get a return on that, because $8 trillion of capex means you need roughly $800 billion of profit just to pay for the interest," he said."

Right, THEY can't, but cloud providers potentially can. And there are probably other uses for everything not GPU/TPU for the Google's of the world. They are out way less than IBM which cannot monetize the space or build data centers efficiently like AWS and Google.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#267

Post by ulfw »

kerabatsos wrote: post #209
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #176

One thing we saw with the dot-com bust is how certain individuals were able to cash in on the failures, e.g., low cost hardware, domain names, etc. (NB. prices may exceed $2) Perhaps people are already thinking about they can cash in on the floor space and HVAC systems that will be left in the wake of failed "AI" hype

Why do you believe it will fail? Because some companies will not be profitable?

I mean that is how capitalism works, no?

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#268

Post by atherton94027 »

matt-p wrote: post #234
slashdave wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years is long, actually. This is not a GPU thing. It's standard for server hardware.

5 years is a long time for GPUs maybe but normal servers have 7 year lifespans in many cases fwiw. These GPUs I assume basically have potential longevity issues due to the density, if you could cool it really really well I imagine no problem.

> normal servers have 7 year lifespans in many cases fwiw

Eight years if you use Hetzner servers!

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#269

Post by ghaff »

getnormality wrote: post #265

A decade ago, IBM was spending enormous amounts of money to tell me stuff like "cognitive finance is here" in big screen-hogging ads on nytimes.com. They were advertising Watson, vaporware which no one talks about today. Are they bitter that someone else has actually made the AI hype take off?

Initial Watson was sort of a mess. But a lot of the Watson-related tech is integrated into a lot of products these days.

Re: IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

#270

Post by pseudosavant »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #176

One thing we saw with the dot-com bust is how certain individuals were able to cash in on the failures, e.g., low cost hardware, domain names, etc. (NB. prices may exceed $2) Perhaps people are already thinking about they can cash in on the floor space and HVAC systems that will be left in the wake of failed "AI" hype

The dotcom bust killed companies, not the Internet. AI will be no different. Most players won’t make it, but the tech will endure and expand.
Post reply on HN