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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

#541

Post by kenhwang »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #515
kenhwang wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type. The 2000 Accord sedan is 2,712lbs, not 2,987lbs (which would be the wagon). The 2019 Civic sedan is 2,743–2,923lbs depending on equipment/trim. So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier. The Miata proves that cars don't have…

> That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type. Good to know. > So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier. If the minimum is 1% heavier and the maximum is 2% lighter then I would not say " did get heavier".

You can only make the argument that the Civic is "2% lighter" when it is being compared to a wagon; apples to oranges comparison that invalidates the whole comparison.

They picked that specific year Accord because it's the same size as a sedan as that specific year Civic sedan, so it makes no sense to then compare the weight to the much larger Accord wagon variant. You might as well compare the sedan to a crossover to argue that the sedan didn't get heavier.

The range is 1% heavier to 7% heavier comparing the sedan to the sedan. Both ends of the range are heavier, so "did get heavier" is an accurate statement.

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

#542

Post by bhewes »

lm28469 wrote: post #229
bhewes wrote: post #61

We use AI to help manufacturers run their OT system more effectively. We don't see employment rising in this sector but do see output increases.

Weird that it doesn't translate to any visible growth, everyone became a 10x employee, but if you exclude Ai companies themselves the GDP barely moved in 3 years.

There maybe a lag we are talking 12-24 month projects on our end. But right AI spending is driving everything we will see how long application shows up.

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

#543

Post by rmoriz »

trollbridge wrote: post #356
rmoriz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be picky, but there is still a lot of value left in "not modern" tasks, like video encoding/transcoding. If somewhere the trickle-down effect is real, then it is computing hardware. Take Hetzner's server auction. If the hardware is physically deployed and running, you just need to find appropriate payloads/customers. https://www.hetzner.com/sb/

We have a box at work for employees bring hardware in they’re getting rid of, along with hardware we’re throwing out that we don’t need anymore. It has a pile of GPUs that are completely obsolete for any task: they use way too much power, have a large form factor that burns up a PCIe x16 slot, are loud, some need extra power cables, lack driver support on modern operating systems, and in return for all that don’t hav…

The key is to calculate right and go for the mainstream hardware. If you are a hosting company with diversified use cases, you have plenty of room to downcycle hardware until it breaks. If you are operating under limited space in a field with bleeding edge/performance targets, doing this is not viable. There are many solution provides that will buy your outdated things. I‘m not saying that old hardware is great or a cash cow in general, but the lifetime can usually be doubled or tripled if the right use case can be found and when you are the owner.

Side quest: Virtualized instances at cloud providers never get upgraded unless recreated. I bet there are millions of VMs running for years on specs and prices of 2018-2020.

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

#544

Post by deadbabe »

mrinterweb wrote: post #505

Investing in AI infrastructure seems very risky to me. With how short of a lifecycle computing hardware generally has, does it make sense to blow billions on hardware that will need to be replaced in a few years? AI companies have been burning billions on hardware. Will the costs of that hardware be covered by profits before the hardware lifecycle is up? That's a big gamble. We used to talk about AI as having no moat…

Once you can run a GPT5 level LLM locally on a device, it’s over. All this mighty infrastructure is no longer any more impressive than a top of the line 2013 Mac Pro in 2025. I think we’re 10 years away from that.

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

#545

Post by whatshisface »

musebox35 wrote: post #532
mrinterweb wrote: post #505

Investing in AI infrastructure seems very risky to me. With how short of a lifecycle computing hardware generally has, does it make sense to blow billions on hardware that will need to be replaced in a few years? AI companies have been burning billions on hardware. Will the costs of that hardware be covered by profits before the hardware lifecycle is up? That's a big gamble. We used to talk about AI as having no moat…

While I agree with the general sentiment on throwaway compute infra, the generated know-how with large scale experiments is not thrown away. I think a lot hinges on the scaling laws and whether you will hit the jackpot at a certain scale before everyone else. This is hard to guesstimate so someone has to do it in the spirit of empiricism. This might sound a lot like gambling or exploring depending on your sentiment.…

While scaling laws are only empirical curve fitting and extrapolation, none of them predict a discontinuous "jackpot effect."

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

#546

Post by GolfPopper »

varjag wrote: post #445
Thlom wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow the desires of the population is fulfilled to a higher degree in authoritarian China than in the beacon of democracy USA.

This uh valiant defense of China misses my point entirely. People in democracies have no excuse hiding their personal responsibility behind flawed leadership.

By the same token, hiding comprehensively broken and undemocratic governance behind "it's the publics' fault, because they get to vote for one of two candidates owned by wealthy donors every 2 years" is the opposite of useful.

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

#547

Post by dragonwriter »

boroboro4 wrote: post #379
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…

Data centers might be, GPUs not really. No one needs GPUs from 8 years, and hardly even 5.

If GPU demand growth continues to outpace GPU production growth, that is necessarily going to change. Older GPUs may not be cost competitive to operate with newer GPUs, but when the alternative is no GPU...

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

#548

Post by Scarblac »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #403
hyperbovine wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools My students are shocked (horrified?) to learn that they're basically running 50-yr old Fortran code when they use scipy.minimize to train their fancy little neural nets.

I always chuckle at how Python became the dominant language for AI / ML / data science etc but wonder why it is that Fortran and Python became the golden combo, it could have been done with any other language, no complaints, I love Python, but its just amusing to me.

NumPy was pretty early, and it hit the sweet spot for science: free, fast, with a quick and dirty scripting language around it.

Then the whole ecosystem that Python has nowadays was built on NumPy, and sending data from one library to another was trivial because of it.

That's it.

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

#549

Post by mikewarot »

yxhuvud wrote: post #417
tclancy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rather think of the maintenance nightmare. You can't change anything - not cause the existing system is good but because there are no people left that understand the whole thing. But then I've got a few years to reach 50. Perhaps my views will change.

The gear cutting machines almost never had mechanical failures. As long as they keep them lubricated, and occasionally muck out the sumps, the machines should still be going in the year 2100.

The other thing about gear cutting is that hobs only cut one size/profile of tooth. Some of the cutting tools I was using dated from before WW1, for odd sizes that didn't get used much.

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

#550

Post by Scarblac »

ACCount37 wrote: post #435
rglover wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shockingly rare question to be asked. As best as I can tell, the biggest threat to civilization isn't AI, it's our culture of "that's not my problem" leaving otherwise patch-able holes in critical systems.

The biggest threat to civilization is, in fact, AI. It's a new problem, and one with an utterly ridiculous lethality at its limit. It makes the atomic bomb look benign. "That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.

Nah, it's global warming.

Because fossil fuel is stupid useful and there's no way we're going to stop burning it. And then we get to the climate scenarios that aren't compatible with our current sophisticated civilization, even with the currently accepted climate science (that always seems to underestimate what actually happens).

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