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NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

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Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#91

Post by bigyabai »

mattigames wrote: post #87
bigyabai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really?

They wouldn't have used copyrighted material if it wasn't a survival matter for them, but sure you go ahead and pretend that they just happen to use it and not really need it that much.

Anyone that doesn't at least acknowledge copyrighted materials will be a footnote. But you don't need it for AI's most profitable applications at all, eg. code generation or sentiment analysis.

ChatGPT just exploits copyright because they can. You might not like it, but the die was cast years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....

Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#92

Post by recursivecaveat »

amelius wrote: post #18
sounds wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is interested in commoditizing their complements. It's a business strategy to decrease the power of OpenAI (for instance). Nvidia dreams of a world where there are lots of "open" alternatives to OpenAI, like there are lots of open game engines and lots open software in general. All buying closed Nvidia chips.

But AI depends on a small number of tensor operators, primitives which can be relatively easily implemented by competitors, so compute is very close to being a commodity when it comes to AI. A company like Cerebras (founded in 2015) proves that this is true. The moat is not in computer architecture. I'd say the real moat is in semiconductor fabrication.

It's not like you can just stamp out a giant grid of flops and just go brrr. Getting utilization is difficult, and the closer you hew to Nvidia's tradeoffs the more you are going to come out unfavorably against a giant who's working with 10,000X your volume and decades of experience. Nvidia proprietary software is very highly embedded into everyone's stacks. The models undergo co-evolution with the hardware, so they are designed with its capabilities in mind.

It's like trying to take on UPS with some new, not quite drop-in logistics network. Theoretically its just a bunch of empty tubs shuffling around, but not so easy in practice. You have to be multiples better than the incumbent to be in contention. Keep in mind for the startups we don't really know who is setting money on fire running models in unprofitable configurations for revenue.

Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#93

Post by hobofan »

bongodongobob wrote: post #5
hobofan wrote: post #3

If Nvidia were interested in "open" AI, they would spend time to collaborate with AMD, etc. to build an (updated) open alternative to CUDA. That's probably the most closed part of the whole stack right now.

That's AMDs fault, not Nvidia's.

AMD is incompetent on the ecosystem layer, but Nvidia has certainly been acting malicious.

I've laid out my thesis at length in past comments, which I don't care to repeat, but the gist is: During the ~2010-2014 period (the time where the ecosystem gap really widened), Nvidia purposfully didn't implement OpenCL 2.0 while pushing CUDA, which made cross-platform solutions uncompetitive.

Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#94

Post by Jlagreen »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #71
next_xibalba wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the A.I. boom, Nvidia had a much, much more diverse customer base in terms of revenue mix. According to their 2015 annual report[1], their revenues were spread across the following revenue segments: gaming, automotive, enterprise, HPC and cloud, and PC and mobile OEMs. Gaming was the largest segment and contributed less than 50% of revenues. At this time, with a diverse customer base, their gross margins wer…

Nobody said this was the case... The only example I used was the console market which has been ruined because of this issue. They generally left that market because it was that horrible.

The console market is low margin because they seem to find someone ready to take low margin (e.g. AMD). Nvidia was in console market before but left it due to low margin. Nvidia only sells old low development chip with probably good margin to Nintendo. The chips in the Switch 2 are using node from 2020 and are super cheap in manufacturing and Nvidia had low efforts in developing them.

AMD however has to design new special APUs for Xbox and PS. Why do they do that? They could just decide to step away from the tender but they won't because they seem to be desperate for any business. Jensen was like that 20 years ago but he has learned that some business you simply step away from.

Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#95

Post by FirmwareBurner »

Herring wrote: post #85
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless China does the same that's an unrealistic ask. That would be like doing nuclear disarmament but only you and everyone else gets to keep their nukes.

Your "nukes" are leaking into the water supply. Inequality shows up a million different ways that Americans don't fully understand yet, eg inflation (dominant companies increasing profits), teacher shortages (low wages), student debt (not an issue for the wealthy so why fix it), housing prices (corporate landlords, exclusionary zoning), layoffs (despite record profits) etc etc. This situation (Trump/Musk/Bezos taking…

The issues you described have nothing to do with AI development.

India also has an advanced space program despite many of its people starving and not having running water.

If you decide to invest in advanced tech development only when all your citizens don't have any issues, tech development would stand still.

Re: NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

#96

Post by jocaal »

lgats wrote: post #74
pmdr wrote: post #20

So basically nvidia handing out cash to itself.

or handing out free hardware? with the side effect of investing in open source llms in their ecosystem

Nvidia's market value is pumped due to hype. They can use this value to raise enormous amounts of capital and make investments that boost their earnings. This impresses investors, and the cycle continues.
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