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There are a lot of Nvidia chips being bought because of the hype. Saudi Arabia and UAE have decided to become AI powerhouses and the way to do that, of course,

There are a lot of Nvidia chips being bought because of the hype. Saudi Arabia and UAE have decided to become AI powerhouses and the way to do that, of course, is to buy lots of Nvidia chips [1]. So has the UK government, and they are buying $130 million worth of chips [2]. There will be lots of disappointment, and the hype will die down. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/c93d2a76-16f3-4585-af61-86667c5090ba https://www.ft.com/content/c93d2a76-16f3-4585-af61-86667c509... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/20/uk-global-race-produce-ai-chips https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/20/uk-global-r...

brucethemoose2 3y ago
The Saudis also bought a Cerebras datacenter.
rmbyrro 3y ago
Why do you think it's a hype and why it'll die down? I'm now a heavy user of AI personally & professionally (as a dev). The two work projects I'm involved with are increasing by a lot the usage of GPU to apply LLM tech. I don't see this coming back. The market growth rate will slow down, but it'll continue to grow (and not come back) for quite a few years, I think. When it starts to slow (growth rate, not market), I guess there'll be other breakthroughs in AI like GPT that'll renew the trend.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Hype. In 80% of cases people overestimate the usefulness of AI. Kinda like the dotcom bubble. Over the long long term it will be enormous, but they're many growing pains until then
  - josephg 3y ago
    > In 80% of cases people overestimate the usefulness of AI. Looking at my chatgpt history, my partner and I seem to average about 3 conversations a day. We would use it a lot more than that if we had a way to invoke it with our voices, like Siri. Our usage is increasing over time as we figure out the sort of questions it’s good at answering. I’m not saying all the hype is justified, but if anything I think people underestimate how useful AI can already be in their lives. It just takes some learning to figure out how and when to use it. This is markedly different from both web3 and VR. It’s 2023 and I still make purchases with my Visa card and play most video games with mouse and keyboard (while my quest - cool as it is - gathers dust).
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      You are an extreme outlier. Most of us on HN are. As of the end of august only 18% of US adults had tried ChatGPT at all (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/28/most-americans-havent-used-chatgpt-few-think-it-will-have-a-major-impact-on-their-job/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/28/most-amer...). For me, the biggest obstacle to get over is trust. I have seen ChatGPT make up facts far too often for it to be useful for a lot of what I ask of google. I also would be VERY leery of integrating it into customer support, etc. At some point I expect some company to have its chat bot enter into a contract with a customer and end up having to deliver.
      - josephg 3y ago
        That makes sense. I suppose my answer is that for most questions I ask chatgpt, I'm ok with the answer being a bit wrong. For example, I asked it how long & hot to heat my oven when I baked cauliflower. It would have been a pity if we burned the cauliflower, but the answer was spot on. Likewise it gave a great answer when I asked for a simple crepe recipe. (The crepes were delicious!). Another time I asked this: > C minor and G major sound good together. What key are they in? And it answered that incorrectly, saying there wasn't a key which contained both chords. But thats not quite right - they're both contained in C harmonic minor. When you ask it to write code, the code often contains small bugs. But that can still be very helpful a lot of the time, to a lot of people. And its also utterly fantastic as a tool for creative writing, where you don't care about facts at all. For example, the output of prompts like this are utterly fantastic: > I'm writing the character of a grumpy innkeeper in a D&D campaign and I want the character to have some quirks to make them interesting for the players. List 20 different weird quirks the innkeeper could have. I just put it in and got things like this: 4. Height Requirement: Refuses to serve anyone taller or shorter than him, with a height chart at the door for reference. 9. Historical Enthusiast: Dresses and talks like he's from a different era, insists patrons do the same to get service.
        dekhn 3y ago
        Uh.... C minor and G major are keys/scales, not chords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_minor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_minor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_chord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_chord (I am not a musician, but I know the circle of fifths, keys, and chords).
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    >Kinda like the dotcom bubble. It's interesting to me that people bring up 'The Dot Com Bubble' as an example of empty hype, when in fact, investing in the Internet even at the peak (deploying capital proportional to 1999 market caps) has one of the best IRR's in the history of time (Amazon, eBay/PayPal, eTrade, etc.). I don't think hype will die down so much as winners will be chosen and the long tail will stop buying GPUs (in the same way Pets.com and Webvan stopped building warehouses).
    - staticman2 3y ago
      ">It's interesting to me that people bring up 'The Dot Com Bubble' as an example of empty hype, when in fact, investing in the Internet even at the peak (deploying capital proportional to 1999 market caps) has one of the best IRR's in the history of time (Amazon, eBay/PayPal, eTrade, etc.)." Do you have a source for this claim? Like, you or someone else has a market cap dataset of 1999 web companies and their market cap, including such 1999 darlings as stanlee.net, pets.com, etc. And you or someone else calculated the perormance of a .com portfolio circa 1999 if held for some time period past 1999? That sounds like a dubious claim, especially because there isn't a clear line between a .com company and a non .com company. I recall related tech companies were also part of the .com hype cycle.
      - RC_ITR 3y ago
        I do! Let's put it this way - at the end of 1999, the top 10 companies were Yahoo! ($110bn)| Amazon ($27bn) | Yahoo! Japan ($25bn) | eBay ($17bn) | Infosapce/Blucora ($10bn) | Lycos ($8bn) | Priceline ($7bn) | eTrade ($7bn) | Monster.com ($6bn) | CNET ($4bn) Pets.com made a lot of noise in the media, but peaked at a $400mn valuation. Yahoo! exited in 2015 for $5bn plus about $40bn of Alibaba stock (bad but not awful) Amazon is the real driver as it went from $27bn to $1,500bn today, a 56x return and a 20% IRR (it's nice when your #2 position does that). Yahoo! Japan went from $25bn to $32bn. eBay was $17bn, combined eBay and PYPL are $100bn. Priceline was $7bn and is now $113bn. eTrade was bought by Morgan Stanley for $13bn in 2020. Lycos was acquired by a Spanish telecom in 2000 for $13bn. The rest of the Top 10 were basically zeroes, but going down the list you also get Expedia ($1bn to $15bn). And keep in mind this is buying at basically the peak. The key is you actually had to listen to the wisdom of the market and not try to play in the penny stocks, which still largely holds true today.
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    Ok, one thing is the market & the tech. Another thing is share prices. Nvidia shares is probably overpriced right now, but we're talking about the demand for its technology and its market dominance. > Kinda like the dotcom bubble. Would 1999 investors have lost money if they held Amazon.com shares - prior to dotcom bubble burst - to this day? Are you arguing the "dotcom" market was a hype that went away? Do you live in the same planet Earth as I do?
    - rwalle 3y ago
      eh, aren't you just repeating "Over the long long term it will be enormous, but they're many growing pains until then"
    - ath92 3y ago
      The 1999 equivalent for Nvidia stocks would have been something like Sun (as mentioned in the article) or Cisco (because they sold routers which everyone thought were essential).
- larnik 3y ago
  Remember NFTs? It was all the rage not that long ago and anyone who questioned otherwise was said to 'not get the big picture'. NFTs were going to improve EVERYTHING. It's not exactly the same, but the hype is similar.
  - rmbyrro 3y ago
    Are you really sure that NFT - a hash of useless image - is a good comparison here?
choppaface 3y ago
Hype and _competition_ . If your adversaries have tech for e.g. Defense applications, you need to have some of the tech yourself.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

The Saudis also bought a Cerebras datacenter.

rmbyrro 3y ago

Why do you think it's a hype and why it'll die down? I'm now a heavy user of AI personally & professionally (as a dev). The two work projects I'm involved with are increasing by a lot the usage of GPU to apply LLM tech. I don't see this coming back. The market growth rate will slow down, but it'll continue to grow (and not come back) for quite a few years, I think. When it starts to slow (growth rate, not market), I guess there'll be other breakthroughs in AI like GPT that'll renew the trend.

paulddraper 3y ago
Hype. In 80% of cases people overestimate the usefulness of AI. Kinda like the dotcom bubble. Over the long long term it will be enormous, but they're many growing pains until then
- josephg 3y ago
  > In 80% of cases people overestimate the usefulness of AI. Looking at my chatgpt history, my partner and I seem to average about 3 conversations a day. We would use it a lot more than that if we had a way to invoke it with our voices, like Siri. Our usage is increasing over time as we figure out the sort of questions it’s good at answering. I’m not saying all the hype is justified, but if anything I think people underestimate how useful AI can already be in their lives. It just takes some learning to figure out how and when to use it. This is markedly different from both web3 and VR. It’s 2023 and I still make purchases with my Visa card and play most video games with mouse and keyboard (while my quest - cool as it is - gathers dust).
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    You are an extreme outlier. Most of us on HN are. As of the end of august only 18% of US adults had tried ChatGPT at all (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/28/most-americans-havent-used-chatgpt-few-think-it-will-have-a-major-impact-on-their-job/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/28/most-amer...). For me, the biggest obstacle to get over is trust. I have seen ChatGPT make up facts far too often for it to be useful for a lot of what I ask of google. I also would be VERY leery of integrating it into customer support, etc. At some point I expect some company to have its chat bot enter into a contract with a customer and end up having to deliver.
    - josephg 3y ago
      That makes sense. I suppose my answer is that for most questions I ask chatgpt, I'm ok with the answer being a bit wrong. For example, I asked it how long & hot to heat my oven when I baked cauliflower. It would have been a pity if we burned the cauliflower, but the answer was spot on. Likewise it gave a great answer when I asked for a simple crepe recipe. (The crepes were delicious!). Another time I asked this: > C minor and G major sound good together. What key are they in? And it answered that incorrectly, saying there wasn't a key which contained both chords. But thats not quite right - they're both contained in C harmonic minor. When you ask it to write code, the code often contains small bugs. But that can still be very helpful a lot of the time, to a lot of people. And its also utterly fantastic as a tool for creative writing, where you don't care about facts at all. For example, the output of prompts like this are utterly fantastic: > I'm writing the character of a grumpy innkeeper in a D&D campaign and I want the character to have some quirks to make them interesting for the players. List 20 different weird quirks the innkeeper could have. I just put it in and got things like this: 4. Height Requirement: Refuses to serve anyone taller or shorter than him, with a height chart at the door for reference. 9. Historical Enthusiast: Dresses and talks like he's from a different era, insists patrons do the same to get service.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        Uh.... C minor and G major are keys/scales, not chords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_minor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_minor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_chord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_chord (I am not a musician, but I know the circle of fifths, keys, and chords).
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  >Kinda like the dotcom bubble. It's interesting to me that people bring up 'The Dot Com Bubble' as an example of empty hype, when in fact, investing in the Internet even at the peak (deploying capital proportional to 1999 market caps) has one of the best IRR's in the history of time (Amazon, eBay/PayPal, eTrade, etc.). I don't think hype will die down so much as winners will be chosen and the long tail will stop buying GPUs (in the same way Pets.com and Webvan stopped building warehouses).
  - staticman2 3y ago
    ">It's interesting to me that people bring up 'The Dot Com Bubble' as an example of empty hype, when in fact, investing in the Internet even at the peak (deploying capital proportional to 1999 market caps) has one of the best IRR's in the history of time (Amazon, eBay/PayPal, eTrade, etc.)." Do you have a source for this claim? Like, you or someone else has a market cap dataset of 1999 web companies and their market cap, including such 1999 darlings as stanlee.net, pets.com, etc. And you or someone else calculated the perormance of a .com portfolio circa 1999 if held for some time period past 1999? That sounds like a dubious claim, especially because there isn't a clear line between a .com company and a non .com company. I recall related tech companies were also part of the .com hype cycle.
    - RC_ITR 3y ago
      I do! Let's put it this way - at the end of 1999, the top 10 companies were Yahoo! ($110bn)| Amazon ($27bn) | Yahoo! Japan ($25bn) | eBay ($17bn) | Infosapce/Blucora ($10bn) | Lycos ($8bn) | Priceline ($7bn) | eTrade ($7bn) | Monster.com ($6bn) | CNET ($4bn) Pets.com made a lot of noise in the media, but peaked at a $400mn valuation. Yahoo! exited in 2015 for $5bn plus about $40bn of Alibaba stock (bad but not awful) Amazon is the real driver as it went from $27bn to $1,500bn today, a 56x return and a 20% IRR (it's nice when your #2 position does that). Yahoo! Japan went from $25bn to $32bn. eBay was $17bn, combined eBay and PYPL are $100bn. Priceline was $7bn and is now $113bn. eTrade was bought by Morgan Stanley for $13bn in 2020. Lycos was acquired by a Spanish telecom in 2000 for $13bn. The rest of the Top 10 were basically zeroes, but going down the list you also get Expedia ($1bn to $15bn). And keep in mind this is buying at basically the peak. The key is you actually had to listen to the wisdom of the market and not try to play in the penny stocks, which still largely holds true today.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  Ok, one thing is the market & the tech. Another thing is share prices. Nvidia shares is probably overpriced right now, but we're talking about the demand for its technology and its market dominance. > Kinda like the dotcom bubble. Would 1999 investors have lost money if they held Amazon.com shares - prior to dotcom bubble burst - to this day? Are you arguing the "dotcom" market was a hype that went away? Do you live in the same planet Earth as I do?
  - rwalle 3y ago
    eh, aren't you just repeating "Over the long long term it will be enormous, but they're many growing pains until then"
  - ath92 3y ago
    The 1999 equivalent for Nvidia stocks would have been something like Sun (as mentioned in the article) or Cisco (because they sold routers which everyone thought were essential).
larnik 3y ago
Remember NFTs? It was all the rage not that long ago and anyone who questioned otherwise was said to 'not get the big picture'. NFTs were going to improve EVERYTHING. It's not exactly the same, but the hype is similar.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  Are you really sure that NFT - a hash of useless image - is a good comparison here?

choppaface 3y ago

Hype and _competition_ . If your adversaries have tech for e.g. Defense applications, you need to have some of the tech yourself.