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

Post by jujube3 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:56 AM UTC

belter wrote: post #803

mattlondon wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> IBM have an incentive to try and pour water on the AI fire to try and sustain their business. IBM has faced multiple lawsuits over the years. From age discrimination cases to various tactics allegedly used to push employees out, such as requiring them to relocate to states with more employer friendly laws only to terminate them afterward. IBM is one of the clearest examples of a company that, if given the opportuni…

Post by MayeulC » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 7:20 AM UTC

MayeulC wrote: post #807

kelnos wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moore's law ended at or shortly before the 28nm era. Moore's law isn't about cost or clock speed, it's about transistor density. While the pace of transistor density increases has slowed, it's still pretty impressive. If we want to be really strict, and say densities absolutely have to double every 2 years, Moore's Law hasn't actually been true since 1983 or so. But it's been close, so 2x/2yr a decent rubric. The f…

If you want to be pedantic, the original (and revised) law are definitely about cost. The original formulation was that the number of features (i.e. transistors) on an integrated circuit doubled every two years for the best-priced chips (smallest cost per feature). https://web.archive.org/web/20220911094433/https://newsroom.... > The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor o…

Post by immibis » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #329

throwaway31131 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100GW per year is not going to happen. The largest plant in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China at 22GW and it’s off the scales huge. We’re not building the equivalent of four of those every year. Unless the plan is to power it off Sam Altman’s hot air. That could work. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations

Amazing that 4 of the top 5 are renewables in China.

Post by HacklesRaised » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 10:18 AM UTC

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…

Post by xocnad » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

jujube3 wrote: post #941

belter wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IBM have an incentive to try and pour water on the AI fire to try and sustain their business. IBM has faced multiple lawsuits over the years. From age discrimination cases to various tactics allegedly used to push employees out, such as requiring them to relocate to states with more employer friendly laws only to terminate them afterward. IBM is one of the clearest examples of a company that, if given the opportuni…

If they could use THEIR AI to replace human workers, they would. If they learned that Claude or ChatGPT was better than an IBM consultant, they'd probably keep that to themselves.