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There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM" The icing on the cake is when all their competitor

There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM" The icing on the cake is when all their competitors say "so will we".

Nasrudith 1y ago
All this time complaining about companies not investing in research and development for future prosperity and now when they actually do so it is suddenly outright immoral?
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Burning a pile of money is not investing in research.
- blitzar 1y ago
  > complaining about companies not investing in research and development Glancing over the last few decades of tax returns it looks like they are claiming a lot of tax credits for R&D, so much so that if someone had a closer look they might find some Fraud, Waste or Abuse.
  - gameman144 1y ago
    Wasteful R&D is still R&D, the company just presumably doesn't get a return on it. If the company does get a return, then the R&D wasn't wasteful. And regardless, the tax code doesn't and shouldn't (IMO) differentiate there, to encourage companies to take risks.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
hlynurd 1y ago
I'm really struggling with seeing how this is immoral.
- blitzar 1y ago
  10 years ago, Apple was the largest company in the world by market capitalization, its market cap was around $479.069 billion. How have we gotten to a point in just a decade where multiple companies are dropping annual numbers that are in the realm of "the market cap of the worlds biggest companies" on these things? Have we solved all (any of) the other problems out there already?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - hlynurd 1y ago
    I'm still not seeing it. It's immoral because it's resources not spent on some particular problem you have in mind?
    - blitzar 1y ago
      The 10x from 400 billion to 4 trillion in a decade didnt come from 2% inflation. It didnt come from nowhwere, or from Silicon Valleys exceptionalism - It came from changing the value of money, labour and resources. It came from everyday people, deficits and borrowing from the next 10 generations of children.
      - hlynurd 1y ago
        Seems like this is about something other than LLMs?
        Qwertious 1y ago
        LLMs don't exist in a vacuum. Someone spends money to build LLMs, builds infrastructure that the LLMs run on, extracts training data to run the LLMs on, uses LLM for various use-cases, and makes revenue from specific LLM users.
        blitzar 1y ago
FooBarBizBazz 1y ago
The numbers are insane to me, relative to other "real" industries. E.g., making some inferences from a recent Economist article, the entire world's nuclear industry "only" generates something like $30bn/year revenue (https://archive.is/WYfIG https://archive.is/WYfIG).
- eastbound 1y ago
  If each French inhabitant consumes 500€ electricity per year and 73% is nuclear, that already makes 24bn€, $28bn.

There is something immoral about a company saying "we are going to spend $100bn this year on building a LLM" The icing on the cake is when all their competitors say "so will we".

Nasrudith 1y ago

All this time complaining about companies not investing in research and development for future prosperity and now when they actually do so it is suddenly outright immoral?

suddenlybananas 1y ago
Burning a pile of money is not investing in research.
blitzar 1y ago
> complaining about companies not investing in research and development Glancing over the last few decades of tax returns it looks like they are claiming a lot of tax credits for R&D, so much so that if someone had a closer look they might find some Fraud, Waste or Abuse.
- gameman144 1y ago
  Wasteful R&D is still R&D, the company just presumably doesn't get a return on it. If the company does get a return, then the R&D wasn't wasteful. And regardless, the tax code doesn't and shouldn't (IMO) differentiate there, to encourage companies to take risks.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

hlynurd 1y ago

I'm really struggling with seeing how this is immoral.

blitzar 1y ago
10 years ago, Apple was the largest company in the world by market capitalization, its market cap was around $479.069 billion. How have we gotten to a point in just a decade where multiple companies are dropping annual numbers that are in the realm of "the market cap of the worlds biggest companies" on these things? Have we solved all (any of) the other problems out there already?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hlynurd 1y ago
  I'm still not seeing it. It's immoral because it's resources not spent on some particular problem you have in mind?
  - blitzar 1y ago
    The 10x from 400 billion to 4 trillion in a decade didnt come from 2% inflation. It didnt come from nowhwere, or from Silicon Valleys exceptionalism - It came from changing the value of money, labour and resources. It came from everyday people, deficits and borrowing from the next 10 generations of children.
    - hlynurd 1y ago
      Seems like this is about something other than LLMs?
      - Qwertious 1y ago
        LLMs don't exist in a vacuum. Someone spends money to build LLMs, builds infrastructure that the LLMs run on, extracts training data to run the LLMs on, uses LLM for various use-cases, and makes revenue from specific LLM users.
      - blitzar 1y ago

FooBarBizBazz 1y ago

The numbers are insane to me, relative to other "real" industries. E.g., making some inferences from a recent Economist article, the entire world's nuclear industry "only" generates something like $30bn/year revenue (https://archive.is/WYfIG https://archive.is/WYfIG).

eastbound 1y ago
If each French inhabitant consumes 500€ electricity per year and 73% is nuclear, that already makes 24bn€, $28bn.