Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

bloomberg.com

291–300 of 349 posts

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

#291
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.

it looks like a variant of Planck's principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

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

#292

- 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…

Copilot (referring to the M365 one) is not a very great product though. It's clearly been rushed to market before it was even done. Microsoft is soooo afraid they'll miss this boat. But we are stuck with the fallout. And it isn't even that affordable.

Microsoft is a master class in becoming so big you don't need compelling products anymore.

You are in their ecosystem, you will use their products.

It took them 12 years to make Teams almost as good as Slack.

Azure only has made it this far because its Microsoft, so many of their roll outs have been terrible (looking at you AKS, Cosmos DB).

Copilot is used at my wifes company because they get it for free, and it seriously seems like its ChatGPT 3.5 still

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

#293
post #69

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…

IMHO anyone who started using AI seriously: 1) Wouldn't want to go back 2) Wouldn't believe that it's about to replace human intellectual work In other words AI got advanced enough to do amazing things but not 500B or T level of amazing and people with the money are not convinced that it will be anytime soon.

> Wouldn't believe that it's about to replace human intellectual work

Yea idk about that one chief. I have been working in ML (specifically scaling of large model training) at FAANG for the past 8 years, and have been using AI for my work since basically the first time this became even slightly usable, and I don’t share your optimism (or pessimism depending on how you see it). Yes it’s still pretty bad, but you have to look at rate of improvement, not just a static picture of where we are today.

I might still be wrong though and you may be right, but claiming that anyone using AI believes like you do is flat out false. A lot of my colleagues also working in ML researcher think like me btw.

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

#294
post #272
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…

> 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? The whole point of an AGI is that you don't need to be a tech master (or even someone of basic competence) to use it, it can just figure it all out.

Technical people don't write code, they (along with product people) specify things exhaustively. While in theory a super AGI can do everything (therefore deprecating all of humanity) in reality I suspect that given existing patterns in orgs of layers of managers who don't like to wade into the details specifying to the nth degree there will be a need for lots of SMEs except that AI will probably be a leaky abstraction and you'll still need technical people to guide the automation efforts

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

#295
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…

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.

This. Thank you.

People stop caring about optimising or improving stuff. Even programmers are guilty of it. I haven't changed my vimrc in over 5 years

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

#296
I'm honestly in two minds on this one. On one hand, I do agree that valuations have run a bit too far in AI and some shedding is warranted. A skeptical position coming from a company like MSFT should help.

On the other hand, I think MSFT was trying to pull a classic MSFT on AI. They thought they can piggyback on top of OpenAI's hard-work and profit massively from it and are now having second thoughts, thats better too. MSFT has mostly launched meh products on top of AI.

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

#297

- 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…

AGI (not) confirmed

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

#299
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is the best direction to go. M$ Nadella is great at business strategic decisions. If only there is another great product person at M$ that pushes the design of their software and hardware. Both has gotten a lot better but still not Apple level of polish.

>Apple level of polish. Absurd claim given the untenable OS release cadence under Tim Cook. "But better than M$" is still undeserving of the lofty implication from "level of polish".

You mean Tim “Apple intelligence” Cook

Ha ha

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

#300
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO anyone who started using AI seriously: 1) Wouldn't want to go back 2) Wouldn't believe that it's about to replace human intellectual work In other words AI got advanced enough to do amazing things but not 500B or T level of amazing and people with the money are not convinced that it will be anytime soon.

What is using AI seriously? I’ve tried to use it as a web search replacement and often the information is generic or tells me what I already know or wrong. I’ve used a code suggestions variant long before OpenAI hype started and while sometimes useful, rarely is it correct or helpful on getting over the next hurdle. Any code from my coworkers is now just AI slop they glanced over once. Then I spend a long time review…

> What is using AI seriously?

It's buying into the hype. AI is crypto 2.0, the true believers live in their own bubble and their own fantasy world.

Post reply on HN