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As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

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Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#391
This might be a little conspiracy thinking, but I think it's possible that the recent drive from NVIDIA to move toward defense contracting and shift to B2B is part of a larger strategy. When you combine that with the rapid increases in hardware pricing and the push toward renting cloud compute, it looks like a form of collusion between the private sector and the government in the name of "national security".

The goal seems to be to squash the proliferation of open source LLMs and prevent individuals from running private, uncensored models at home. It is an effective way to kill any possible underdog or startup competition by making the "barrier to entry" (the compute) a rented privilege rather than a private resource. The partnership with Palantir seems to point directly to this, especially considering the ideologies of Thiel and Karp.

They are building a world where intelligence is centralized and monitored, and local sovereignty over AI is treated as a liability to be phased out

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#392

I cannot stop thinking about the LLMs having this Midas touch quality, because everything they touch seems to ruin things or make people want to avoid them, for example: - Ghibli studio style graphics, - the infamous em-dashes and bullet points - customer service (just try to use Klarnas "support" these days...) - Oracle share price ;) - imagine being one of the worlds most solid and unassailable tech companies, losi…

> Where does it stop? When we decide to drop all technology as it is? Whenever you want. Of course you can't directly control what other people do or how much they use t0echnology. But you have lots of direct control over what you use, even if it's not complete control. I stopped taking social media seriously in the early 2010's. I'm preparing for a world of restricted, boring, corporate, invasive Internet, and devel…

> it's probably time to relearn those (the upper classes never stopped using them)

Can you tell me more about these? I’m actively trying to find ways to cultivate my community.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#394
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that there is near enough room for creativity to shine through in the prompt-generation pipeline, and I find the mention of a talent like Ansel Adams in this context asinine. There is no control there, and without control over creation I don't believe that creativity CAN flourish, but I may be wrong. Electronic music is analogous to digital art made by humans, not generated art.

You may check these videos by Oleg Kuvaev. 100% generated using AI. Everything: text, music, characters, voices, editing -- all done via prompts, using multiple engines (I think he mentioned about a dozen services involved). I would not call it "high art", but it's definitely not a slop, it's an artist skillfully using AI as a tool. https://youtu.be/A2H62x_-k5Q?si=EHq5Y4KCzBfo0tfm https://youtu.be/rzCpT_S536c?si=pxiD…

While we're sharing AI generated videos, IGORRR's ADHD music video [0] is definitively art, zero question about it. I don't think typing a prompt in and taking the output as it comes is art -- good art, anyway (the point-and-shoot photography comparison is apt) -- but that doesn't mean AI can't be used to make truly new, creative and unique art too.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190 (warning, lots of disturbing imagery)

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#395
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that there is near enough room for creativity to shine through in the prompt-generation pipeline, and I find the mention of a talent like Ansel Adams in this context asinine. There is no control there, and without control over creation I don't believe that creativity CAN flourish, but I may be wrong. Electronic music is analogous to digital art made by humans, not generated art.

> I don't believe that there is near enough room for creativity to shine through in the prompt-generation pipeline I mean you are building a prompt and tweaking it. I mean even if you didn't do that you could still argue that finding it is in itself a creative akin to found art [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_object

I suppose. You're "finding" something that didn't exist and that nobody ever cared about. Something that you wrote, mashed against the tensors trained on real artist creations, and out came the thing that you "found".

I'm genuinely amazed at how some people perceive art.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does it stop? When we decide to drop all technology as it is? Whenever you want. Of course you can't directly control what other people do or how much they use t0echnology. But you have lots of direct control over what you use, even if it's not complete control. I stopped taking social media seriously in the early 2010's. I'm preparing for a world of restricted, boring, corporate, invasive Internet, and devel…

> it's probably time to relearn those (the upper classes never stopped using them) Can you tell me more about these? I’m actively trying to find ways to cultivate my community.

Face-to-face social gatherings - parties, dinners, clubs, meetups

Membership organizations - country clubs, professional associations, alumni networks, charitable boards

Personal introductions and referrals - being introduced through mutual acquaintances

Cultural and civic participation - involvement in local institutions, community organizations, religious groups

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#397
post #383
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that there is near enough room for creativity to shine through in the prompt-generation pipeline, and I find the mention of a talent like Ansel Adams in this context asinine. There is no control there, and without control over creation I don't believe that creativity CAN flourish, but I may be wrong. Electronic music is analogous to digital art made by humans, not generated art.

How much room for creativity is there with a camera? Angle, lighting, F-stop, film type, film processing? I have a local image generator app called Draw Things that has many times more options than this. Early synthesizers weren't that versatile either. Bands like Pink Floyd actually got into electronics and tore them apart and hacked them. Early techno and hip-hop artists did similar things and even figured out how…

I do not think that the things you say will happen, will ever happen.

Also, photography has the added benefit of documenting the world as it is, but through the artist's lens. That added value does not exist when it comes to slop.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#398

I cannot stop thinking about the LLMs having this Midas touch quality, because everything they touch seems to ruin things or make people want to avoid them, for example: - Ghibli studio style graphics, - the infamous em-dashes and bullet points - customer service (just try to use Klarnas "support" these days...) - Oracle share price ;) - imagine being one of the worlds most solid and unassailable tech companies, losi…

> Where does it stop? When we decide to drop all technology as it is? It doesn't stop. This is because that it's not the "technology" driving AI. You already acknowledged the root cause: CEOs. AI could be great, but it's currently being propped up by sales hype and greed. Sam wants money and power. Satya and Sundar want money and power. Larry and Jensen want to also cash in on this facade that's been built. Can LLMs…

> Sam wants money and power.

I think all the AI companies want to be the first to say they have achieved AGI, that moment will be in the history books.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#399
post #376
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how, or even if, it does stop. I assume once the hot air from LLM company CEOs starts being treated as the flatulence that it is, things will wind down. The sentiment against generated content is not going away.

In previous eras there were many purists who considered photography not-art, sequencer and synthesizer made music not-music, other forms of (non-AI) digital art less legitimate than their more manual classical counterparts, etc. This is the same discourse all over again. Is electronic music where the artist composes it on a screen and then hits 'play' music? I think it is, of course, but I have had experiences where…

> Is electronic music where the artist composes it on a screen and then hits 'play' music?

If X composes something, X is an artist. The person playing a composed work is a performer. Some people have both the roles of artist and performer for a given work.

To say an AI composes something is anthropomorphizing a computer. If you enter a prompt to make a machine generate work based on existing artists' art, you're not composing (in the artistic sense) and neither is the computer. Math isn't art even if it's pretty or if mathematical concepts are used in art.

The term "director" instead of composer or artist conveys what's happening a lot better with telling machines to generate art via prompts.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#400
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. While I might agree or disagree with the argument, it is a clear, politely expressed view. It is sad HN is sliding in the direction of folks being downvoted for opinions instead of the tone they use to express them :(

I agree with you, but: > I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. - Paul Graham, 2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

That view is about 18 years old and HN was very different then.

As with any communication platform it risks turning into an echo chamber, and I am pretty sure that particular PG view has been rejected for many years (I think dang wrote on this more than once). HN works very hard to avoid becoming politicized and not discouraging minority views is a large part of that.

For example, I now seldom bother to write anything that I expect to rub the left coast folks the wrong way: I don't care about karma, but downvoted posts are effectively hidden. There is little point of writing things that few will see. It is not too bad at HN yet, but the acceptance of the downvote for disagreement is the strongest thing that pushes HN from discussions of curious individuals towards the blah-quality of "who gets more supporters" goals of the modern social media. My 2c.

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