3 ms·

> We may reach a point where the only ones able to afford compute are AI companies Nah. I think "good enough AI for 95% of people" will be able to run locally

by dheera 7mo ago

> We may reach a point where the only ones able to afford compute are AI companies Nah. I think "good enough AI for 95% of people" will be able to run locally within 3-5 years on consumer-accessible devices. There will be concentration of the best compute in AI companies for training, but inference will always become cheaper over time. Decommissioned training chips will also become inference chips, adding even more compute capacity to inference. This is like computing once again. In 1990 only the upper class could afford computers, as of 2000 only the upper class owned mobile phones, as of now more or less everyone and their kid has these things.

hn_acc1 7mo ago
1990? We were solid lower-middle class, and I got a computer for Christmas in 1983. I bought my own, from $$ saved by working in 1987.
- Karrot_Kream 7mo ago
  Computers were roughly ~ $1000 in 1990. How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure inflation adjusted to $2565 today? Average minimum wage in the US is $11.30 so that's 29 days working at minimum wage. My family was on the border of upper-lower and lower-middle and we bought a computer once and used it for 10+ years. I dumpster dove later to scavenge parts for upgrading until the mid 2000s when cheap computers became available.
  - cocoto 7mo ago
    Yes and also keep in mind that low-income in US is high income in most of the world!
    - doctorwho42 7mo ago
      I hate this point, so what? It's not like the lower class in "pick you region of interest" can take advantage of this localized price disparity. The poor person is poor based on their spending power with respect to the local economy and its pricing.
      - creato 7mo ago
        Using this example: a computer was an unlikely purchase for a lower-middle class person in the US, but it wasn't totally unattainable. Many people in the US probably did it, and some of them probably found some positive return on that investment. That's not true of many "objectively" poor people in the world, who even if they could buy the computer, they might not have had access to electricity to run it.
        NetMageSCW 7mo ago
        I’m not sure what your point is? Today, many (most?) of those “poor” people have smartphones which are more powerful than those computers were.
  - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    > How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure What, like a yearly vacation? Maybe they stayed home for Christmas one year instead of flying to visit family
    - kelnos 7mo ago
      Flying? We were solid middle class in the 80s and my first plane flight wasn't until 2001 (and then only because I was away at college and my mother had died suddenly). My parents hadn't flown since the 70s (before my sister and I were born), and even then, that was a rare thing for them. Our childhood vacations were single-day (so we didn't have to pay for a hotel) road trips to a nearby state to go to an amusement park, or multi-day trips (also within driving distance) where my dad had to go somewhere for work and the hotel was paid for by his employer. It was a huge huge deal for us when, in the late 90s, we drove down to Disney World (a 13-hour drive) for a several-day trip. And we never traveled around Christmas; that was one of the most expensive times of the year to travel! Not sure when or where you grew up, but most middle-class folks in the US in the 80s didn't have a lot of discretionary income, and flights were (inflation adjusted) quite a bit more expensive than they are today.
      - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
        I suspect your family was not as middle class as you think it was. You're describing a very similar childhood to what I had in the late 80s, but we were lower class for sure I'm not saying that middle class families flew all the time in the 80s, but they absolutely could afford to if they wanted to make it a priority A cursory google search seems to bear this out. Cheap flights in north america started in 1978 with some air travel deregulation.
        Karrot_Kream 7mo ago
        GP claims their family was lower middle class not properly middle class. My family mostly traveled like kelnos family did at the time. Also gas prices in the 80s-90s were so cheap that it rarely made sense to fly over driving. We flew as a family twice as a kid because we were an immigrant family and we saved up to visit the country of origin but it was ridiculously expensive to take the whole family, so dad stayed home one vacation, and we always stayed there with family. We did have a computer but it was really a one time expense. At the time computers were improving quickly so I scavenged parts which wealthy areas that threw last Gen hardware away but were better than what we had (and I was a kid with a lot of time on my hands.) Giving a computer to a kid for Christmas in '83 is a very different value proposition than even a family vacation because a vacation is something the whole family does.
  - sarchertech 7mo ago
    >$1000 That depends very much on the computer. https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sears-Christmas-Book/0658 https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sea... Commodore 64C,1990, $159.99 My parents were working class in the 80s and we got a used Tandy that plugged into the TV and ran BASIC.
- kelnos 7mo ago
  We were solid middle-middle class and didn't have a computer until 1989, and it was a "free", 2- or 3-year-old computer from my dad's work that they were going to throw away. We absolutely could not have afforded a computer during the 80s. Even in the 90s, we kept relying on cast-offs from my dad's employer, and when I was preparing to go to college in '99, my parents scrounged to buy me the parts for a computer to build and take to college. But even then, my dad bought the parts at a discount through a former co-worker's consulting company, and vetoed a couple of my more expensive component choices. And now that I think about it, my first laptop in 2003 was my dad's old work laptop that had been decommissioned.
  - hdgvhicv 7mo ago
    You couldn’t afford a Commodore 64 or spectrum? Yet were middle class? US median household wage was $24k in 1985 and a c64 $150 More likely your parents decided to spend the money on something else. Like a $400 19” tv

by dheera 7mo ago

hn_acc1 7mo ago

1990? We were solid lower-middle class, and I got a computer for Christmas in 1983. I bought my own, from $$ saved by working in 1987.

Karrot_Kream 7mo ago
Computers were roughly ~ $1000 in 1990. How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure inflation adjusted to $2565 today? Average minimum wage in the US is $11.30 so that's 29 days working at minimum wage. My family was on the border of upper-lower and lower-middle and we bought a computer once and used it for 10+ years. I dumpster dove later to scavenge parts for upgrading until the mid 2000s when cheap computers became available.
- cocoto 7mo ago
  Yes and also keep in mind that low-income in US is high income in most of the world!
  - doctorwho42 7mo ago
    I hate this point, so what? It's not like the lower class in "pick you region of interest" can take advantage of this localized price disparity. The poor person is poor based on their spending power with respect to the local economy and its pricing.
    - creato 7mo ago
      Using this example: a computer was an unlikely purchase for a lower-middle class person in the US, but it wasn't totally unattainable. Many people in the US probably did it, and some of them probably found some positive return on that investment. That's not true of many "objectively" poor people in the world, who even if they could buy the computer, they might not have had access to electricity to run it.
      - NetMageSCW 7mo ago
        I’m not sure what your point is? Today, many (most?) of those “poor” people have smartphones which are more powerful than those computers were.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  > How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure What, like a yearly vacation? Maybe they stayed home for Christmas one year instead of flying to visit family
  - kelnos 7mo ago
    Flying? We were solid middle class in the 80s and my first plane flight wasn't until 2001 (and then only because I was away at college and my mother had died suddenly). My parents hadn't flown since the 70s (before my sister and I were born), and even then, that was a rare thing for them. Our childhood vacations were single-day (so we didn't have to pay for a hotel) road trips to a nearby state to go to an amusement park, or multi-day trips (also within driving distance) where my dad had to go somewhere for work and the hotel was paid for by his employer. It was a huge huge deal for us when, in the late 90s, we drove down to Disney World (a 13-hour drive) for a several-day trip. And we never traveled around Christmas; that was one of the most expensive times of the year to travel! Not sure when or where you grew up, but most middle-class folks in the US in the 80s didn't have a lot of discretionary income, and flights were (inflation adjusted) quite a bit more expensive than they are today.
    - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
      I suspect your family was not as middle class as you think it was. You're describing a very similar childhood to what I had in the late 80s, but we were lower class for sure I'm not saying that middle class families flew all the time in the 80s, but they absolutely could afford to if they wanted to make it a priority A cursory google search seems to bear this out. Cheap flights in north america started in 1978 with some air travel deregulation.
      - Karrot_Kream 7mo ago
        GP claims their family was lower middle class not properly middle class. My family mostly traveled like kelnos family did at the time. Also gas prices in the 80s-90s were so cheap that it rarely made sense to fly over driving. We flew as a family twice as a kid because we were an immigrant family and we saved up to visit the country of origin but it was ridiculously expensive to take the whole family, so dad stayed home one vacation, and we always stayed there with family. We did have a computer but it was really a one time expense. At the time computers were improving quickly so I scavenged parts which wealthy areas that threw last Gen hardware away but were better than what we had (and I was a kid with a lot of time on my hands.) Giving a computer to a kid for Christmas in '83 is a very different value proposition than even a family vacation because a vacation is something the whole family does.
- sarchertech 7mo ago
  >$1000 That depends very much on the computer. https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sears-Christmas-Book/0658 https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sea... Commodore 64C,1990, $159.99 My parents were working class in the 80s and we got a used Tandy that plugged into the TV and ran BASIC.
kelnos 7mo ago
We were solid middle-middle class and didn't have a computer until 1989, and it was a "free", 2- or 3-year-old computer from my dad's work that they were going to throw away. We absolutely could not have afforded a computer during the 80s. Even in the 90s, we kept relying on cast-offs from my dad's employer, and when I was preparing to go to college in '99, my parents scrounged to buy me the parts for a computer to build and take to college. But even then, my dad bought the parts at a discount through a former co-worker's consulting company, and vetoed a couple of my more expensive component choices. And now that I think about it, my first laptop in 2003 was my dad's old work laptop that had been decommissioned.
- hdgvhicv 7mo ago
  You couldn’t afford a Commodore 64 or spectrum? Yet were middle class? US median household wage was $24k in 1985 and a c64 $150 More likely your parents decided to spend the money on something else. Like a $400 19” tv