5 ms·

350k H100 cards, around ten billion dollars just for the GPUs. Less if Nvidia gives a volume discount, which I imagine they do not.

renegade-otter 3y ago
It will be ironic if Meta sinks all this money into the new trend and finds out later that it has been a huge boondoggle, just as publishers followed Facebook's "guidance" on video being the future, subsequently gutting the talent pool and investing into video production and staff - only to find out it was all a total waste.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- motoxpro 3y ago
  It already paid off. When the world moved from determinisic to probablistic ad modeling. That's why their numbers are so good right now compared to every other advertiser
  - blitzar 3y ago
    It already paid off. FB stonk price is up lots.
  - althea_tx 3y ago
    Can you explain more about this?
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      Apple turned off a lot of "signals" used by advertisers for precisely targeted ads via persistent user-beacons. Facebook ad placement quality (and revenue) cratered in the immediate aftermath. Meta has since gotten better at it- likely with lots of AI-assistance and their revenue numbers reflect this. The targeting is now likely probabilistic in that the advertiser now makes educated guesses on the best ads to serve based on limited or non-existent identity information. So the AI efforts would have paid back by way of higher revenues.
- echelon 3y ago
  As a practitioner in the field, I can assure you this is not a boondoggle. Those GPUs are going to subsume the entire music, film, and gaming industries. And that's just to start.
  - __loam 3y ago
    "My paycheck depends on this technology destroying every field producing cultural artifacts"
    - echelon 3y ago
      Said the butter churner, cotton ginner, and petrol pumper. I work in film. I've shot dozens of them the old fashioned way. I've always hated how labor, time, and cost intensive they are to make. Despite instructions from the luminaries to "just pick up a camera", the entire process is stone age. The field is extremely inequitable, full of nepotism and "who you know". Almost every starry-eyed film student winds up doing drudge work for the rest of their lives. Most will never make a feature to match their ambition. If the whole task was to simply convey my thoughts and dreams to others, why am I scrambling around to sign location rights, capture photons on expensive glass, and then smear and splice things together for months on end? This is ceremonial and soon to be anachronistic. I'm glad that whole mess is going to be replaced. It's a farce. To phrase it another way - would you like to be hand-writing assembly on punch cards? To only gain entrance into the field with your mathematics PhD? To speak of the liberty and the economics, why should I have to sell the rights to my idea to a studio so I can get it off the ground? Why should I have to obey the studio's rules and mind their interference? This whole Gen AI thing is going to be the biggest liberating moment for filmmaking creatives. I know, because I am one. And if you think any Jack or Jill can just come in and text prompt a whole movie, you're crazy. It's still hard work and a metric ton of good taste. Art will never die. It's the human soul. It'll take more than some tech bros with GPUs to kill it. AI is just another tool for the artist. A "bicycle for the mind" to quote Jobs, and a rocket ship for the imagination to convey my own direct experience.
      - sangnoir 3y ago
- tayo42 3y ago
  What does video not be in the future mean? In social media tiktok and reels are everywhere?
  - michaelt 3y ago
    There are reports [1] that a bunch of companies like "College Humor" were convinced to switch to producing native video for facebook (instead of directing users to their own sites) on the basis of bullshit metrics from facebook, and had an extremely bad time as a result, with some companies going bankrupt. Something like counting an autoplaying video that ran for 3 seconds as a 'view' IIRC [1] https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120 https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120
    - scubbo 3y ago
      Thankfully, Dropout (a spin-off of College Humor) is alive and well, and producing some of the best D&D Actual Play series as well as other non-D&D comedy shows. One of the entertainment services that I happily pay for because I want to support what they're doing.
  - neon_electro 3y ago
    They are referring to Facebook/Meta’s 2015 “pivot to video”, speculating there may be a similar thing happening more recently with AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video
    - tayo42 3y ago
      Interesting thanks! Feels like in hind sight, maybe they were just to early to it.
    - neuronexmachina 3y ago
      TIL. Reading up on it a little, I'm surprised the class-action settlement was just $40M: https://www.videoadvertisingsettlement.com/ https://www.videoadvertisingsettlement.com/
- foobarian 3y ago
  There is still hope then for cheap gaming GPUs some day soon! I have pretty much the last 10 years of flagship releases to catch up on...

renegade-otter 3y ago

It will be ironic if Meta sinks all this money into the new trend and finds out later that it has been a huge boondoggle, just as publishers followed Facebook's "guidance" on video being the future, subsequently gutting the talent pool and investing into video production and staff - only to find out it was all a total waste.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
motoxpro 3y ago
It already paid off. When the world moved from determinisic to probablistic ad modeling. That's why their numbers are so good right now compared to every other advertiser
- blitzar 3y ago
  It already paid off. FB stonk price is up lots.
- althea_tx 3y ago
  Can you explain more about this?
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    Apple turned off a lot of "signals" used by advertisers for precisely targeted ads via persistent user-beacons. Facebook ad placement quality (and revenue) cratered in the immediate aftermath. Meta has since gotten better at it- likely with lots of AI-assistance and their revenue numbers reflect this. The targeting is now likely probabilistic in that the advertiser now makes educated guesses on the best ads to serve based on limited or non-existent identity information. So the AI efforts would have paid back by way of higher revenues.
echelon 3y ago
As a practitioner in the field, I can assure you this is not a boondoggle. Those GPUs are going to subsume the entire music, film, and gaming industries. And that's just to start.
- __loam 3y ago
  "My paycheck depends on this technology destroying every field producing cultural artifacts"
  - echelon 3y ago
    Said the butter churner, cotton ginner, and petrol pumper. I work in film. I've shot dozens of them the old fashioned way. I've always hated how labor, time, and cost intensive they are to make. Despite instructions from the luminaries to "just pick up a camera", the entire process is stone age. The field is extremely inequitable, full of nepotism and "who you know". Almost every starry-eyed film student winds up doing drudge work for the rest of their lives. Most will never make a feature to match their ambition. If the whole task was to simply convey my thoughts and dreams to others, why am I scrambling around to sign location rights, capture photons on expensive glass, and then smear and splice things together for months on end? This is ceremonial and soon to be anachronistic. I'm glad that whole mess is going to be replaced. It's a farce. To phrase it another way - would you like to be hand-writing assembly on punch cards? To only gain entrance into the field with your mathematics PhD? To speak of the liberty and the economics, why should I have to sell the rights to my idea to a studio so I can get it off the ground? Why should I have to obey the studio's rules and mind their interference? This whole Gen AI thing is going to be the biggest liberating moment for filmmaking creatives. I know, because I am one. And if you think any Jack or Jill can just come in and text prompt a whole movie, you're crazy. It's still hard work and a metric ton of good taste. Art will never die. It's the human soul. It'll take more than some tech bros with GPUs to kill it. AI is just another tool for the artist. A "bicycle for the mind" to quote Jobs, and a rocket ship for the imagination to convey my own direct experience.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
tayo42 3y ago
What does video not be in the future mean? In social media tiktok and reels are everywhere?
- michaelt 3y ago
  There are reports [1] that a bunch of companies like "College Humor" were convinced to switch to producing native video for facebook (instead of directing users to their own sites) on the basis of bullshit metrics from facebook, and had an extremely bad time as a result, with some companies going bankrupt. Something like counting an autoplaying video that ran for 3 seconds as a 'view' IIRC [1] https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120 https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1183209875859333120
  - scubbo 3y ago
    Thankfully, Dropout (a spin-off of College Humor) is alive and well, and producing some of the best D&D Actual Play series as well as other non-D&D comedy shows. One of the entertainment services that I happily pay for because I want to support what they're doing.
- neon_electro 3y ago
  They are referring to Facebook/Meta’s 2015 “pivot to video”, speculating there may be a similar thing happening more recently with AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video
  - tayo42 3y ago
    Interesting thanks! Feels like in hind sight, maybe they were just to early to it.
  - neuronexmachina 3y ago
    TIL. Reading up on it a little, I'm surprised the class-action settlement was just $40M: https://www.videoadvertisingsettlement.com/ https://www.videoadvertisingsettlement.com/
foobarian 3y ago
There is still hope then for cheap gaming GPUs some day soon! I have pretty much the last 10 years of flagship releases to catch up on...