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xAI joins SpaceX

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#611

Post by afavour »

Rover222 wrote: post #584
rainsford wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen. Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude an…

You really can't grasp that GPUs scaled at this level is the most ambitious thing possible? That it will be the foundation of unfathomable technological innovation?

Will it, though?

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#612

Post by ee64a4a »

mrguyorama wrote: post #511
claaams wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, its kind of cool to see how robber barons work in real time in our generation. Its also insanely depressing as they will systematically enshittify and extract as much wealth from society as is possible.

I don't actually think the Robber Barons in the 1920s had people going out of their way to defend them and insist they had special knowledge. The New Deal happened with massive popular support because people did not like the Barons, and wanted to stop them and actually have a life worth living. It only took like 30 years of suffering.

The Robber Barons weren't in the 1920s; that refers to industrial age monopolists (e.g. rail/oil), and culminated in the Sherman Antitrust (i.e. 1800s).

Broadly, your point is still valid, though. Just a mild inaccuracy between the Gilded Age and the roaring 20s.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#613

Post by jaimex2 »

n_u wrote: post #463

A former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics who later worked at Google for 10 years wrote an article about why datacenters in space are very technically challenging: https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri... I don't have any specialized knowledge of the physics but I saw an article suggesting the real reason for the push to build them in space is to hedge against political pushback pr…

No one is interested in excuses on why it can't be done. Were in interested in the plan on how they plan to do it.

The guy is saying satellite communication is restricted to 1Gbps ffs. SpaceX is way past that.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#614

Post by mr_toad »

gok wrote: post #45

> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon. edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial…

> We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally.

Doubling every three years; at that rate it would take about 30 years for 1TW to become 1000TW. Whether on not the trend continues largely depends on demand, but as of right now humanity seems to have an insatiable demand for power.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#615

Post by yalogin »

I thought xAi previously merged with twitter, so all of this is now rolled into SpaceX? Atleast the investors in xAi and the original financiers in twitter get a breather. SpaceX is the new bandaid for this hot mess. Let’s see if this ends up rotting SpaceX or if it gets healed.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#616

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #577
taurath wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t even have a habitable structure in space when the ISS falls, there is no world in which space datacenters are a thing in the next 10, I’d argue even 30 years. People really need to ground themselves in reality. Edit: okay Tiangong - but that is not a data center.

> We don’t even have a habitable structure in space Silicon is way more forgiving than biology. This isn’t an argument for this proposal. But there is no technical connection between humans in space and data centers other than launch-cost synergies.

[deleted]

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#617

Post by elihu »

lugao wrote: post #608
gok wrote: post #45

> it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon. edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial…

Only people who never interacted with data center reliability think it's doable to maintain servers with no human intervention.

Do they need to be maintained? If one compute node breaks, you just turn it off and don't worry about it. You just assume you'll have some amount of unrecoverable errors and build that into the cost/benefit analysis. As long as failures are in line with projections, it's baked in as a cost of doing business.

The idea itself may be sound, though that's unrelated to the question of whether Elon Musk can be relied on to be honest with investors about what their real failure projections and cost estimates are and whether it actually makes financial sense to do this now or in the near future.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#618

Post by yalogin »

Musk’s schtick lately has always been to find a challenging problem, point everyone to it and say “ I will solve it by September “, have the stock shoot up and make money. His first dis that with self driving, then twitter, then xAi, and now robots and data center in space. These last two will last him a decade as these are both challenging problems to solve over night.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#619

Post by tombert »

farresito wrote: post #350
outside1234 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Let it fail. Bring back NASA.

NASA just splurges money. The private sector is far better when it comes to money.

> The private sector is far better when it comes to money.

I've heard this a lot, but I've worked for BigCos and it seems like all they do is spend money, often superfluously. I've seen BigCos spend large quantities money on support contracts every year that haven't been used in more than a decade, or sending people on business trips across the country so they can dial into a meeting, or buying loads of equipment that sits dormant in warehouses for years and then is eventually sold off for pennies on the dollar.

I'm not convinced that they're better than the government with money allocation, I think they're just better at telling people they are.

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