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

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

#781

Post by miohtama »

bloppe wrote: post #590
delaminator wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assessment of Claude simply isn’t true. Or Stackoverflow is really good. I’m producing multiple projects per week that are weeks of work each.

Would you mind sharing some of these projects? I've found Claude's usefulness is highly variable, though somewhat predictable. It can write `jq` filters flawlessly every time, whereas I would normally spend 30 minutes scanning docs because nobody memorizes `jq` syntax. And it can comb through server logs in every pod of my k8s clusters extremely fast. But it often struggles making quality code changes in a large code…

The former tasks are directly from the training material, directly embedded into the model. For the latter task, it needs a context window and intelligence.

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

#782

Post by jayd16 »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #365
jayd16 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect somebody to be heavily invested currently and also completely openly pessimistic about it?

No, I don’t trust a word Sundar or Satya say about AI either. CEOs should be hyping anything they’re invested in, it’s literally their job. But convincing investors that every thing they don’t invest in heavily is worthless garbage is effectively part of their job too. What is more convincing is when someone invests heavily (and is involved heavily) and then decides to stop sending good money after bad (in their esti…

> What is more convincing is when someone invests heavily (and is involved heavily) and then decides to stop sending good money after bad (in their estimation).

But Watson doesn't count?

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

#783

Post by datameta »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #614
bloppe wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing some of these projects? I've found Claude's usefulness is highly variable, though somewhat predictable. It can write `jq` filters flawlessly every time, whereas I would normally spend 30 minutes scanning docs because nobody memorizes `jq` syntax. And it can comb through server logs in every pod of my k8s clusters extremely fast. But it often struggles making quality code changes in a large code…

Claude has taught me so much about how to use jq better. And really, way more efficient ways of using the command line in general. It's great. Ironically, the more I learn the less I want to ask it to do things.

In an ideal world we function in exactly this way - using LLMs to bootstrap our skill/knowledge improvement journeys.

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

#784

Post by xgulfie »

brookst wrote: post #716
kopirgan wrote: post #715

What's the legal status of all this AI code?! Will it be likely that someone whose code was lifted as part of "learning" can sue?!

Anyone can sue for anything. I’m not sure we want a world where anyone who learns from existing code is committing a tort.

GenAI isn't a person

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

#785

Post by JamesSwift »

bloppe wrote: post #590
delaminator wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assessment of Claude simply isn’t true. Or Stackoverflow is really good. I’m producing multiple projects per week that are weeks of work each.

Would you mind sharing some of these projects? I've found Claude's usefulness is highly variable, though somewhat predictable. It can write `jq` filters flawlessly every time, whereas I would normally spend 30 minutes scanning docs because nobody memorizes `jq` syntax. And it can comb through server logs in every pod of my k8s clusters extremely fast. But it often struggles making quality code changes in a large code…

This is a "scratch an itch" project I initially started to write manually in the past, but never finishing. I then used claude to do it basically on the side while watching the world series http://nixpkgs-pr-explorer.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.co...

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

#786

Post by evanjrowley »

mattlondon wrote: post #771
blablabla123 wrote: post #533

Despite the flashy title that's the first "sober" analysis from a CEO I read about the technology. While not even really news, it's also worth mentioning that the energy requirements are impossible to fulfill Also now using ChatGPT intensely since months for all kinds of tasks and having tried Claude etc. None of this is on par with a human. The code snippets are straight out of Stackoverflow...

Take this "sober" analysis with a big pinch of salt. IBM have totally missed the AI boat, and a large chunk of their revenue comes from selling expensive consultants to clients who do not have the expertise to do IT work themselves - this business model is at a high risk of being disrupted by those clients just using AI agents instead of paying $2-5000/day for a team of 20 barely-qualified new-grads in some far-off c…

Is this true in 2025?

Asking because the biggest IT consulting branch of IBM, Global Technology Services (GTS), was spun off into Kyndryl back in 2021[0]. Same goes for some premier software products (including one I consulted for) back in 2019[1]. Anecdotal evidence suggests the consulting part of IBM was already significantly smaller than in the past.

It's worth noting that IBM may view these AI companies as competitors to it's Watson AI tech[2]. It already existed before the GPU crunch and hyperscaler boom - runs on proprietary IBM hardware.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyndryl

[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hcl-technologies-to...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Watson

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

#787

Post by cubefox »

marcosdumay wrote: post #305
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #18

> Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said This doesn't seem correct to me, or at least is built on several shaky assumptions. One would have to 'refill' your hardware if: - AI accelerator cards all start dying around the 5 year mark, which is possib…

Historically, GPUs have improved in efficiency fast enough that people retired their hardware in way less than 5 years. Also, historically the top of the line fabs were focused on CPUs, not GPUs. That has not been true for a generation, so it's not really clear if the depreciation speed will be maintained.

> Historically, GPUs have improved in efficiency fast enough that people retired their hardware in way less than 5 years.

This was a time when chip transistor cost was decreasing rapidly. A few years earlier even RAM cost was decreasing quickly. But these times are over now. For example, the PlayStation 5 (where the GPU is the main cost), which launched five years ago, even increased in price! This is historically unprecedented.

Most price/performance progress is nowadays made via better GPU architecture instead, but these architectures are already pretty mature, so the room for improvement is limited.

Given that the price per transistor (which TSMC & Co are charging) has decreased ever more slowly in recent years, I assume it will eventually come almost to a halt.

By the way, this is strictly speaking compatible with Moore's law, as it is only about transistors per chip area, not price. Of course the price per chip area was historically approximately constant, which meant exponentially increasing transistor density implied exponentially decreasing transistor price.

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

#788

Post by lordnacho »

infecto wrote: post #745
blablabla123 wrote: post #533

Despite the flashy title that's the first "sober" analysis from a CEO I read about the technology. While not even really news, it's also worth mentioning that the energy requirements are impossible to fulfill Also now using ChatGPT intensely since months for all kinds of tasks and having tried Claude etc. None of this is on par with a human. The code snippets are straight out of Stackoverflow...

I am a senior engineer, I use cursor a lot in my day to day. I find I can code longer and typically faster than without. Is it on par with human? It’s getting pretty darn close to be honest, I am sure the “10x” engineers of the world would disagree but it definitely has surpassed a junior engineer. We all have our anecdotes but I am inclined to believe on average there is net value.

Largely agree. Anything that is just a multi-file edit, like an interface change, it can do. Maybe not immediately, but you can have it iterate, and it doesn't eat up your attention.

It is without a doubt worth more than the 200 bucks a month I spend on it.

I will go as far as to say it has decent ideas. Vanilla ideas, but it has them. I've actually gotten it to come up with algorithms that I thought were industry secrets. Minor secrets, sure. But things that you don't just come across. I'm in the trading business, so you don't really expect a lot of public information to be in the dataset.

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

#789

Post by ExoticPearTree »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #18

> Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: "You've got to use it all in five years because at that point, you've got to throw it away and refill it," he said This doesn't seem correct to me, or at least is built on several shaky assumptions. One would have to 'refill' your hardware if: - AI accelerator cards all start dying around the 5 year mark, which is possib…

> AI accelerator cards all start dying around the 5 year mark,

More likely the technology will be much better in 5 years in terms of hardware that it is (very) uneconomical to run anything on old hardware.

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

#790

Post by Clent »

brookst wrote: post #719
fainpul wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what we're getting is a flood of buggy, unoriginal crap.

Remind me when exactly it was that most software was bug-free and original? 1990? 1975?

It global warming exists, why is there snow?

Same thing here. You're dismissing a flood because it rains.

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