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America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#331

Post by rhubarbtree »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #193
rhubarbtree wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the case? If a company gets to AGI a month later, why does that matter so much? We’re not talking super intelligence here, just human level intelligence. OpenAI was first to ChatGPT yet other companies are still in the game.

My argument is based on 1. The first company to get AGI will likely have a multitude of high-leverage problems it would immediately put AGI to task on 2. One of those problems is simply improving itself. Another is securing that company's lead over its competitors (by basically helping every employee at that company do better at their job) 3. The company that reaches AGI for a language-style model will likely do so d…

Wait, but why would an AGI be better at improving itself compared to an AI researcher doing it?

AGI is not super intelligence.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#332

Post by fidotron »

tclancy wrote: post #302
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.

I'm somewhere in the middle, young enough that almost everything I've seen new is disposable crap (including the tools), old enough that I have had an interest in things from before and noticed that they really were built much better, or at least heavier, back then.

I've made the comment on here before that I believe it's short term energy optimisation, in that it used to be seen as reasonable to much heavier objects around. We've made everything so light we've lost the infrastructure for moving heavy stuff around when we might need to.

Kids today have no concept of how heavy workstations, TVs or monitors used to be, and they think it's exaggeration. Let alone tools, cars, appliances etc.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#333

Post by [deleted] »

simgt wrote: post #279
ffsm8 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They built this knowledge up only in the last 10-15 yrs though. It's absolutely possible to reverse this trend within a much shorter time period then this argument always implies.

How do you end up with 10-15 years? China is almost perfectly vertically integrated from raw materials to highly advanced finished products. Their industrialization started in the 70s. Getting to that level would require a lot of planning as well as the kind of hard constraints imposed on China through embargo. We're not even getting back to that level, we've never reached iPhone level of manufacturing in the US or E…

[deleted]

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#334

Post by makeitdouble »

tclancy wrote: post #302
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.

I don't know where I fit on that spectrum, my first thought was there's probably nobody around anymore to replace these fifty year old tools, and/or they'll price it at a level that would wipe all profits for the next 10 years when replacement will be needed.

Our field also have these IBM AS/400 or older running for 30+ years in a server room at the back of an office floor. They are more feared than revered.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#335

Post by bluGill »

nxm wrote: post #213
bluGill wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrestricted immigration is good - they just want a 'boogyman' to blame unrelated problems on.

Sarcasm much I hope

The truth. If you think otherwise you have been mislead by people who have been good at pushing a narrative and never been challenged.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#336

Post by rhubarbtree »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #317
rhubarbtree wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centre hardware is more like 3 years.

No they don't. 5-8 years is common. The source for the 3 year number is an unnamed random person claiming to be a Google engineer, and Google specifically reached out to all the journalists publishing that claim with this response. > Recent purported comments about Nvidia GPU hardware utilization and service life expressed by an “unnamed source” were inaccurate, do not represent how we utilize Nvidia’s technology, an…

It dropped down, but is now being extended to 5 years.

The 3 year number was reported by the FT this year from a bunch of companies, where they were saying their accountants are extending to 5 years.

Another example, MS just moved from 4 years to 5.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#338

Post by culll_kuprey »

sensanaty wrote: post #182
thaack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

Sorry but whenever I hear employers say "much better pay/benefits compared to the competition", the reality is in 99.9% of cases that it's a negligible difference for work that is harder and much less desirable. How much higher is the pay? Cause the first thing that crosses into my mind is oil rigs, where they get paid more than many software engineers I know do, and there's a huge number of people doing the work hap…

I bust out loud laughing the other day when I saw two jobs listed here in rusty southern Ohio.

One was for a semi-skilled manufacturing position. A little more than just assembly line, but nothing super special or niche. The other was a janitor position at the local public school system.

The differential was not huge, but the janitor paid more. Probably less hours too.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#339

Post by al_borland »

baq wrote: post #310
al_borland wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a factory for a few months. They moved me around on the line. While each week looked the same, each day in the week was different. Though I was told by some of the other guys on the line that it was one of the nicer factories they ever worked in. I did some tech work in a few auto factories as well, and those had a very different vibe on the floor. While it may be boring to someone who use used to doing k…

The thing is, minimum wage there pays for 10 people on the floor in Asia and the cost of the factory is approximately the same. There’s no economic sense to build a factory in the states… which is where all the government subsidies enter the stage, but the budget is already running a war time deficit. It’s going to be so much worse for those small used-to-be-factory cities until the printer starts for real, and then…

Tariffs are used all over the world for this exact reason, which is what is being attempted now. It will take time for it to pay off, more time than the current administration has, which is likely why business will drag their feet.

I think economic benefit goes beyond just having the lowest price. Having good jobs for people in the country means they have money to spend. If people make next to nothing, all they can afford is Temu quality. This is bad for the citizens, bad for US businesses, and bad for the environment. The only winner is China.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#340

Post by trenchpilgrim »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #336
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. 5-8 years is common. The source for the 3 year number is an unnamed random person claiming to be a Google engineer, and Google specifically reached out to all the journalists publishing that claim with this response. > Recent purported comments about Nvidia GPU hardware utilization and service life expressed by an “unnamed source” were inaccurate, do not represent how we utilize Nvidia’s technology, an…

It dropped down, but is now being extended to 5 years. The 3 year number was reported by the FT this year from a bunch of companies, where they were saying their accountants are extending to 5 years. Another example, MS just moved from 4 years to 5.

You are confusing depreciation (which is mostly driven by tax reasons) with service lifecycle.
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