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

businessinsider.com

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

#491

Post by 7222aafdcf68cfe »

slashdave wrote: post #172
scroot wrote: post #24

As an elder millennial, I just don't know what to say. That a once in a generation allocation of capital should go towards...whatever this all will be, is certainly tragic given current state of the world and its problems. Can't help but see it as the latest in a lifelong series of baffling high stakes decisions of dubious social benefit that have necessarily global consequences.

Well, at least this doesn't involve death and suffering, like the old-fashioned way to jump-start an economy by starting a global war.

when the US sells out Europe to Russia, do you think the Russians will stop? That global war might be with us within a decade.

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

#492

Post by ndr »

pacifika wrote: post #487
stevenjgarner wrote: post #240

"It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later, Xerox is born, and IBM has been kicking themselves ever since. It is ten years later, the late '60s. Digital Equipment DEC and others invent the minicomputer. IBM dismisses the minicomputer as too small to do serious computing and, therefore, unimportant to their business. DEC…

50 year grudges are not relevant there is no one still at ibm that worked there in 1977, IMHO.

Culture evolution can be very fast, yet some cultures stick around for a very long time.

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

#493

Post by elnatro »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #240

"It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later, Xerox is born, and IBM has been kicking themselves ever since. It is ten years later, the late '60s. Digital Equipment DEC and others invent the minicomputer. IBM dismisses the minicomputer as too small to do serious computing and, therefore, unimportant to their business. DEC…

Were Xerox, Dec, or Apple burning investor money by the billions of dollars?

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

#494

Post by vlovich123 »

pacifika wrote: post #487
stevenjgarner wrote: post #240

"It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later, Xerox is born, and IBM has been kicking themselves ever since. It is ten years later, the late '60s. Digital Equipment DEC and others invent the minicomputer. IBM dismisses the minicomputer as too small to do serious computing and, therefore, unimportant to their business. DEC…

50 year grudges are not relevant there is no one still at ibm that worked there in 1977, IMHO.

It’s the ship of Theseus in corporate form. Even if all the people are gone but the culture hasn’t changed, is the criticism inaccurate?

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

#495

Post by logifail »

duped wrote: post #402
darth_avocado wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what Michael Burry is complaining about? That five years is actually too generous when it comes to depreciation of these assets and that companies are being too relaxed with that estimate. The real depreciation is more like 2-3 years for these GPUs that cost tens of thousands of dollars a piece. https://x.com/michaeljburry/status/1987918650104283372

How different is this from rental car companies changing over their fleets? I don't know, this is a genuine question. The cars cost 3-4x as much and last about 2x as far as I know, and the secondary market is still alive.

> How different is this from rental car companies changing over their fleets?

New generations of GPUs leapfrog in efficiency (performance per watt) and vehicles don't? Cars don't get exponentially better every 2–3 years, meaning the second-hand market is alive and well. Some of us are quite happy driving older cars (two parked outside our home right now, both well over 100,000km driven).

If you have a datacentre with older hardware, and your competitor has the latest hardware, you face the same physical space constraints, same cooling and power bills as they do? Except they are "doing more" than you are...

Would we could call it "revenue per watt"?

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

#496

Post by mkjs »

chii wrote: post #453
physicsguy wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centre cards a don’t have fans and don’t have video out these days.

i dont mean consumer market for video cards - i mean a consumer buying ai chips to run themselves so they can have it locally. If i can buy a $10k ai card for less than $5000 dollars, i probably would, if i can use it to run an open model myself.

At that point it isn't a $10k card anymore, it's a $5k card. And possibly not a $5k card for very long in the scenario that the market has been flooded with them.

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

#499

Post by jacquesm »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #240

"It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later, Xerox is born, and IBM has been kicking themselves ever since. It is ten years later, the late '60s. Digital Equipment DEC and others invent the minicomputer. IBM dismisses the minicomputer as too small to do serious computing and, therefore, unimportant to their business. DEC…

Steve Jobs, the guy that got booted out of his own company and that required a lifeline from his arch nemesis to survive?

This is all true, but it was only true in hindsight and as such does not carry much value.

It's possible that you are right and AI is 'the future' but with the present day AI offering I'm skeptical as well. It isn't at a level where you don't have to be constantly on guard against bs and in that sense it's very different from computing so far, where reproducibility and accuracy of the results were important, not the language that they are cast in.

AI has killed the NLP field and it probably will kill quite a few others, but for the moment I don't see it as the replacement of general computing that the proponents say that it is. Some qualitative change is still required before I'm willing to check off that box.

In other news: Kodak declares digital cameras a fad, and Microsoft saw the potential of the mp3 format and created a killer device called the M-Pod.

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

#500

Post by altmanaltman »

vlovich123 wrote: post #494
pacifika wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 year grudges are not relevant there is no one still at ibm that worked there in 1977, IMHO.

It’s the ship of Theseus in corporate form. Even if all the people are gone but the culture hasn’t changed, is the criticism inaccurate?

I mean, okay, but you're taking the current leadership's words and claiming they are incorrect because IBM management was not great at identifying trends decades ago. Historical trend is not an indicator of the future and it's not engaging in good faith on the conversation if overspending on AI can be backed by revenue in the future. You're attacking the messenger instead of the message.
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