3 ms·

The numbers are obviously high, because if this takes off then the price for inference will also drop. But I still think it’s a solid economic model that benefi

The numbers are obviously high, because if this takes off then the price for inference will also drop. But I still think it’s a solid economic model that benefits low income countries the most. In Ukraine, for example, I know people who live on $200/month. A couple Mac Minis could feed a family in many places. As a business owner, I can think of multiple reasons why a decentralized network is better for me as a business than relying on a hyperscaler inference provider. 1. No dependency on a BigTech provider who can cut me off or change prices at any time. I’m willing to pay a premium for that. 2. I get a residential IP proxy network built-in. AI scrapers pay big money for that. 3. No censorship. 4. Lower latency if inference nodes are located close to me.

kennywinker 6mo ago
How many of those people who could live off $200USD/month can afford or already have a mac mini in the house?
- znnajdla 6mo ago
  They already have an iPhone. They could save up or borrow for a Mac Mini if they had to. Some of those people I know who live on $200/month have $30k in the bank.
  - lxglv 6mo ago
    then you are talking about low spend, not low income
    - znnajdla 6mo ago
      Not really. There are lots of people who have low income and low spending, but not low savings. Retired pensioners with savings. Young families who inherited from deceased parents/grandparents. Highly paid professionals on sabbatical. I've met people from all of those categories in Ukraine who live on $200/month.
NiloCK 6mo ago
On the latency point - your requests are still going through the coordinator of the system here. So on average strictly worse than a large provider. You - Darkbloom - Operator - Darkbloom - you, vs You - Provider - you --- On the censorship point - this is an interesting risk surface for operators. If people are drawn my decentralized model provisioning for its lax censorship, I'm pretty sure they're using it to generate things that I don't want to be liable for. If anything, I could imagine dumber and stricter brand-safety style censorship on operator machines.
- znnajdla 6mo ago
  I'm not talking about Darkbloom specifically, but rather this business model in general. I'm sure a future version of Darkbloom could be P2P for better latency. Or their central operator nodes could be geo-balanced. Liability for censorship doesn't matter if it's truly zero trust. Anyway censorship is not my main concern. Low-latency decentralized inference with no US BigTech dependency is a much bigger selling point in Europe.
yard2010 6mo ago
It's quite funny thinking about a chimpanzee seeing a lot of bananas thinking this could feed my family and then same with humans only with Mac Minis
aacid 6mo ago
Isn't this same premise as "lets buy few GPUs to mine crypto and have passive income"? It didn't work very well and it probably won't work now either. If there is money to be made, bigger players will get in there, buy out all mac minis they can, drive price up for regular people and inevitably drive inference price down so you'll be lucky to get initial investment back
- znnajdla 6mo ago
  No it's not the same premise at all. Crypto doesn't do anything useful for legitimate businesses. AI inference is very useful for legitimate businesses, and so are residential IP proxies for scraping. And by definition, residential IPs cannot be centralized. And as building GPUs becomes more expensive, the existing pool of second hand unused hardware becomes more valuable, not less. The problem with crypto mining is that it quickly becomes unprofitable for small scale deployments. I'm not sure if AI inference would be, especially for the decentralized benefits of lower latency.
  - rzwitserloot 6mo ago
    It is the same premise, because the person you are responding to is not talking about the moral implications at all, only about the financial / hardware implications. Running AI inference increases the power draw, and requires certain hardware. Mining bitcoin increases the power draw, and requires certain hardware. OP's point thus stands: Bad players will find places to get far cheaper power than the intended audience, and will buy dedicated hardware, at which point the money you can earn to do this will soon drop below the costs for power (for folks like you and me). Maybe that won't happen, but why won't that happen?
    - znnajdla 6mo ago
      The main problem with crypto is there is no universal need for it. The demand for crypto doesn’t keep increasing as compute gets cheaper. But the demand for AI inference is only growing, and making it cheaper would likely only increase demand. So it’s not a race to the bottom. Sure hyper focused players can earn more at higher margins. But average players can probably still earn decently. Take for example electricity. It can still be profitable for a home in Germany to install balcony solar and make a little money selling back to the grid even though it’s obviously not as efficient as an industrial power plant. Mom and pop AI inference don’t have to be super efficient as long as they serve a universal need - it will be like balcony solar in Europe.

kennywinker 6mo ago

How many of those people who could live off $200USD/month can afford or already have a mac mini in the house?

znnajdla 6mo ago
They already have an iPhone. They could save up or borrow for a Mac Mini if they had to. Some of those people I know who live on $200/month have $30k in the bank.
- lxglv 6mo ago
  then you are talking about low spend, not low income
  - znnajdla 6mo ago
    Not really. There are lots of people who have low income and low spending, but not low savings. Retired pensioners with savings. Young families who inherited from deceased parents/grandparents. Highly paid professionals on sabbatical. I've met people from all of those categories in Ukraine who live on $200/month.

NiloCK 6mo ago

On the latency point - your requests are still going through the coordinator of the system here. So on average strictly worse than a large provider. You - Darkbloom - Operator - Darkbloom - you, vs You - Provider - you --- On the censorship point - this is an interesting risk surface for operators. If people are drawn my decentralized model provisioning for its lax censorship, I'm pretty sure they're using it to generate things that I don't want to be liable for. If anything, I could imagine dumber and stricter brand-safety style censorship on operator machines.

znnajdla 6mo ago
I'm not talking about Darkbloom specifically, but rather this business model in general. I'm sure a future version of Darkbloom could be P2P for better latency. Or their central operator nodes could be geo-balanced. Liability for censorship doesn't matter if it's truly zero trust. Anyway censorship is not my main concern. Low-latency decentralized inference with no US BigTech dependency is a much bigger selling point in Europe.

yard2010 6mo ago

It's quite funny thinking about a chimpanzee seeing a lot of bananas thinking this could feed my family and then same with humans only with Mac Minis

aacid 6mo ago

Isn't this same premise as "lets buy few GPUs to mine crypto and have passive income"? It didn't work very well and it probably won't work now either. If there is money to be made, bigger players will get in there, buy out all mac minis they can, drive price up for regular people and inevitably drive inference price down so you'll be lucky to get initial investment back

znnajdla 6mo ago
No it's not the same premise at all. Crypto doesn't do anything useful for legitimate businesses. AI inference is very useful for legitimate businesses, and so are residential IP proxies for scraping. And by definition, residential IPs cannot be centralized. And as building GPUs becomes more expensive, the existing pool of second hand unused hardware becomes more valuable, not less. The problem with crypto mining is that it quickly becomes unprofitable for small scale deployments. I'm not sure if AI inference would be, especially for the decentralized benefits of lower latency.
- rzwitserloot 6mo ago
  It is the same premise, because the person you are responding to is not talking about the moral implications at all, only about the financial / hardware implications. Running AI inference increases the power draw, and requires certain hardware. Mining bitcoin increases the power draw, and requires certain hardware. OP's point thus stands: Bad players will find places to get far cheaper power than the intended audience, and will buy dedicated hardware, at which point the money you can earn to do this will soon drop below the costs for power (for folks like you and me). Maybe that won't happen, but why won't that happen?
  - znnajdla 6mo ago
    The main problem with crypto is there is no universal need for it. The demand for crypto doesn’t keep increasing as compute gets cheaper. But the demand for AI inference is only growing, and making it cheaper would likely only increase demand. So it’s not a race to the bottom. Sure hyper focused players can earn more at higher margins. But average players can probably still earn decently. Take for example electricity. It can still be profitable for a home in Germany to install balcony solar and make a little money selling back to the grid even though it’s obviously not as efficient as an industrial power plant. Mom and pop AI inference don’t have to be super efficient as long as they serve a universal need - it will be like balcony solar in Europe.