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Comment on Microsoft has pulled back on over a gigawatt of planned data center capacity, suggesting that they do not think there is a growth future in generative AI

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Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

More efficient hardware use should be amazing for AI since it allows you to scale even further.

If you can achieve scaling with software, you can delay current plans for expensive hardware. If a new driver came out that gave Nvidia 5090 performance to games with gtx1080 equivalent hardware would you still buy a new video card this year?

When all the Telcos scaled back on building fiber in 2000, that was because they didn’t have a positive outlook for the Internet?

Or when video game companies went bankrupt in the 1980’s, it was because video games were over as entertainment?

There’s a huge leap between not spending billions on new data centers ( which are used for more than just AI), and claiming that’s the reason AI is over.

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FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

If a new driver came out that gave Nvidia 5090 performance to games with gtx1080 equivalent hardware would you still buy a new video card this year?

It doesn’t make any sense to compare games and AI. Games have a well-defined upper bound for performance. Even Crysis has “maximum settings” that you can’t go above. Supposedly, this doesn’t hold true for AI, scaling it should continually improve it.

So: yes, in your analogy, MS would still buy a new video card this year if they believed in the progress being possible and reasonably likely.

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- Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Like games have diminished returns on better graphics (it’s already photo realistic few pay $2k on a GPU for more hairs?), AI has a plateau where it gives good enough answers that people will pay for the service.
  
  If people are paying you money and the next level of performance is not appreciated by the general consumer, why spend billions that will take longer to recoup?
  
  And again data centers aren’t just used for AI.
  
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  - FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It’s still not a valid comparison. We’re not talking about diminished returns, we’re talking about an actual ceiling. There are only so many options implemented in games - once they’re maxed out, you can’t go higher.
    
    That’s not the situation we have with AI, it’s supposed to scale indefinitely.
    
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    Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Current games have a limit. Current models have a limit. New games could scale until people don’t see a quality improvement. New models can scale until people don’t see a quality improvement.
    
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Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If buying a new video card made me money, yes.

This doesn’t really work, because the goal when you buy a video card isn’t to have the most possible processing power ever and playing video games doesn’t scale linearly so having an additional card doesn’t add anything.

If I was mining crypto, or selling GPU compute (which is basically what ai companies are doing) and the existing card got an update that made it perform on par with new cards, I would buy out the existing cards and when there are no more, I would buy up the newer cards, they are both generating revenue still.

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- Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  If buying a new video card made me money, yes
  
  But this is the supposition that not buying a video card makes you the same money. You’re forecasting free performance upgrades so there’s no need to spend money now when you can wait and upgrade the hardware once software improvements stop.
  
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