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

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

#321
post #318

The second buyer will make truckloads of money, remember the data center and fiber network liquidation of 2001+ - smart investors collected the overcapacity and after a couple of years the money printer worked. This time it will be the same, only the single purpose hardware (LLM specific GPUs) will probably end on a landfill.

The game is getting OpenAI to owe you as much money as you can. When they fail to pay back, you own OpenAI.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is that the Internet was actually useful technology, whereas AI is not (so far at least).

More use cases for AI than blockchain so far.

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

#323
post #149
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the same dynamic as old servers. They still work fine but power costs make them uneconomical compared to latest tech.

That could change with a power generation breakthrough. If power is very cheap then running ancient gear till it falls apart starts making more sense

Power consumption is only part of the equation. More efficient chips => less heat => lower cooling costs and/or higher compute density in the same space.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tired: homelabbers bringing decommissioned datacenter gear home. Wired: homelabbers moving into decommissioned datacenters.

"Loft for rent, 50,000 sq ft in a new datacenter, roof access, superb wiring and air conditioning, direct access to fiber backbone."

Never worn.

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI has value in automation and optimisation which increase profit margins.When AGI is everywhere, then the game is who has the smartest agi, who can offer it cheapest, who can specialise it for my niche etc. Also in this context agi need to run somewhere and IBM stands to benefit from running other peoples models.

> then the game is who has the smartest agi, who can offer it cheapest, who can specialise it for my niche etc. I always thought the use case for developing AGI was "if it wants to help us, it will invent solutions to all of our problems". But it sounds like you're imagining a future in which companies like Google and OpenAI each have their own AGI, which they somehow enslave and offer to us as a subscription? Or has…

AGI is something that can do the kind of tasks people can do, not necessarily "solve all of our problems".

"Recursively improving intelligence" is the stuff that will solve everything humans can't even understand and may kill everybody or keep us as pets. (And, of course, it qualifies as AGI too.) A lot of people say that if we teach an AGI how to build an AGI, recursive improvement comes automatically, but in reality nobody even knows if intelligence even can be improved beyond recognition, or if one can get there by "small steps" evolution.

Either way, "enslaving" applies to beings that have egos and selfish goals. None of those are a given for any kind of AI.

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

#327
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I'd trust IBM when they are pitching their own stuff. But if anybody has experience with the difficulty of making money off of cutting-edge technology, it's IBM. They were early to AI, early to cloud computing, etc. And yet they failed to capture market share and grow revenues sufficiently in those areas. Cool tech demos (like the Watson Jeopardy) mimic some AI demos today (6-second videos). Yeah, i…

> but it just wasn't IBM's software that people ended up buying. Well, I mean, WebSphere was pretty big at the time; and IBM VisualAge became Eclipse. And I know there were a bunch of LoB applications built on AS/400 (now called "System i") that had "real" web-frontends (though in practice, they were only suitable for LAN and VPN access, not public web; and were absolutely horrible on the inside, e.g. Progress OpenEd…

Oh wow I didn’t know Eclipse was an IBM product originally. IDEs have come so far since Eclipse 15 years ago.

And while I’m writing this I just finished up today’s advent of code using vim instead of a “real IDE” haha

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

#328
Mind you IBM makes +7B from keeping old school enterprise hooked up on 30 plus year old tech like z/OS and Cobol and their own super outdated stack. their AI division is frankly embarrassing. of course they would say that. IBM is one of the most conservative, anti-progress leaches in the entire tech industry. I am glad they are missing out big time on the AI gold rush. to me if anything this is a green signal.

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

#329

> 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…

100GW per year is not going to happen. The largest plant in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China at 22GW and it’s off the scales huge. We’re not building the equivalent of four of those every year. Unless the plan is to power it off Sam Altman’s hot air. That could work. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations

Amazing that 4 of the top 5 are renewables in China.
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