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That is more or less their actual plan. They ignore or want us to ignore that the technology is commoditising so fast that even if it is great, they won't have

That is more or less their actual plan. They ignore or want us to ignore that the technology is commoditising so fast that even if it is great, they won't have enough of an advantage for this to provide an edge for more than a matter of months. Just as Microsoft and anyone betting on AI data centre rollouts want us to ignore that the equipment they are rolling out will be functionally inadequate to support new models in far less time than they can make money to offset the cost; the only part of this capital expenditure that will provide lasting value is the building/power/cooling infrastructure, and probably not all of that. It's a giant money pit, funding a bunch of people who are not long off the crypto grift train if they are at all.

righthand 1y ago
> funding a bunch of people who are not long off the crypto grift train if they are at all. Your last statement: are you implying that the AI-bubble is perhaps an attempt at building out more cryptocurrency mining outfits?
- exasperaited 1y ago
  No I just think it's the same people (because it is the same people). They jump from hype technology to hype technology, and many of them had an enormous incentive to jump from one GPU-investment-heavy technology with a bad reputation for grift to the new shiny-clean-hope-for-the-future thing that might help them make use of their capital investments. But specifically at least one of these people — Sam Altman —- is not, IMO, off the crypto grift train, because he's still chairman of Worldcoin, which strikes me (and more importantly strikes regulators around the world [0]) as a pretty shoddy operation (not to mention creepy and weird). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)#Legal_and_regulatory_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)#Legal_and_r...
cruffle_duffle 1y ago
The LLM space is so weird. On the one hand they are spectacularly amazing tools I use daily to help write code, proofread various documents, understand my home assistant configuration, and occasionally reflect on parenting advice. On the other hand, they are the product of massive tech oligarchs, require $$$$ hardware, dumber than a box of rocks at times, and all the stuff you said. Oh yeah, and it definitely has a whiff of crypto grift all over it, but yet unlike crypto it actually is useful and produces things of value. Like, where is this tech headed? Is it always going to be something that can only be run economically off shared hardware in a data center or is the day I can run a “near frontier model” on consumer grade hardware just around the corner? Is it always going to be trained and refined by massive centralized powers or will we someday soon be able to join a peer 2 peer training clan ran by denizens of 4chan? This stuff is so overhyped and yet so under hyped at the same time. I can’t really wrap my head around it.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  > the day I can run a “near frontier model” on consumer grade hardware just around the corner? I suspect it is, in fact. But you can also see why a bunch of very very large, overinvested companies would have incentives to try to make sure it isn't. So it's going to be interesting.
- ludamn 1y ago
  > This stuff is so overhyped and yet so under hyped at the same time. I can’t really wrap my head around it. perfectly stated, I had to play a lot with some models to get a better picture of how they work and their limitations, before that all the articles I read about them were either "LLMs are the greatest thing ever, totally perfect and made me a 100x engineer" or "LLMs are complete BS and don't provide any value" I do think we can build great products on top of them, but the way they're being sold implies we'll need no more new product because a chat interface w/ some tool calling is all you'll ever need.

righthand 1y ago

> funding a bunch of people who are not long off the crypto grift train if they are at all. Your last statement: are you implying that the AI-bubble is perhaps an attempt at building out more cryptocurrency mining outfits?

exasperaited 1y ago
No I just think it's the same people (because it is the same people). They jump from hype technology to hype technology, and many of them had an enormous incentive to jump from one GPU-investment-heavy technology with a bad reputation for grift to the new shiny-clean-hope-for-the-future thing that might help them make use of their capital investments. But specifically at least one of these people — Sam Altman —- is not, IMO, off the crypto grift train, because he's still chairman of Worldcoin, which strikes me (and more importantly strikes regulators around the world [0]) as a pretty shoddy operation (not to mention creepy and weird). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)#Legal_and_regulatory_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)#Legal_and_r...

cruffle_duffle 1y ago

The LLM space is so weird. On the one hand they are spectacularly amazing tools I use daily to help write code, proofread various documents, understand my home assistant configuration, and occasionally reflect on parenting advice. On the other hand, they are the product of massive tech oligarchs, require $$$$ hardware, dumber than a box of rocks at times, and all the stuff you said. Oh yeah, and it definitely has a whiff of crypto grift all over it, but yet unlike crypto it actually is useful and produces things of value. Like, where is this tech headed? Is it always going to be something that can only be run economically off shared hardware in a data center or is the day I can run a “near frontier model” on consumer grade hardware just around the corner? Is it always going to be trained and refined by massive centralized powers or will we someday soon be able to join a peer 2 peer training clan ran by denizens of 4chan? This stuff is so overhyped and yet so under hyped at the same time. I can’t really wrap my head around it.

exasperaited 1y ago
> the day I can run a “near frontier model” on consumer grade hardware just around the corner? I suspect it is, in fact. But you can also see why a bunch of very very large, overinvested companies would have incentives to try to make sure it isn't. So it's going to be interesting.
ludamn 1y ago
> This stuff is so overhyped and yet so under hyped at the same time. I can’t really wrap my head around it. perfectly stated, I had to play a lot with some models to get a better picture of how they work and their limitations, before that all the articles I read about them were either "LLMs are the greatest thing ever, totally perfect and made me a 100x engineer" or "LLMs are complete BS and don't provide any value" I do think we can build great products on top of them, but the way they're being sold implies we'll need no more new product because a chat interface w/ some tool calling is all you'll ever need.