Shed a tear, if you wish, for Nvidia founder and Chief Executive Jenson Huang, whose fortune (on paper) fell by almost $10 billion that day.
Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble
Submitted 2 months ago by grid11@lemy.nl to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’m sure he won’t mind. Worrying about that doesn’t sound like working.
I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I work seven days a week. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about working, and when I’m working, I’m working. I sit through movies, but I don’t remember them because I’m thinking about work.
- Huang on his 14 hour workdays
It is one way to live.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
That sounds like mental illness.
msage@programming.dev 2 months ago
Yeah ok sure buddy, but what do you DO actually?
lauha@lemmy.one 2 months ago
Some would not call that living
militaryintelligence@lemmy.world 2 months ago
People like that consider scrolling xitter work
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Psychosis doesn’t justify extreme privilege.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
He knows what this hype is, so I don’t think he’d be upset. Still filthy rich when the bubble bursts, and that won’t be soon.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
My only real hope out of this is that that copilot button on keyboards becomes the 486 turbo button of our time.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
The stock market is not based on income. It’s based entirely on speculation.
Since then, shares of the maker the high-grade computer chips that AI laboratories use to power the development of their chatbots and other products have come down by more than 22%.
June 18th: $136 August 4th: $100 August 18th: $130 again now: $103 (still above 8/4)
I don’t think any of this is indicative of a “leaking” bubble. Just tech journalists conjuring up clicks.
Also bubbles don’t “leak”.
SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Also bubbles don’t “leak”.
I mean, sometimes they kinda do? They either pop or slowly deflate, I’d say slow deflation could be argued to be caused by a leak.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
We taking about bubbles or are we talking about balloons? Maybe we should change to using the word balloon instead, since these economic ‘bubbles’ can also deflate slowly.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I’ve never seen a bubble deflate, but I digress.
iopq@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The broader market did the same thing
$560 to $510 to $560 to $540
So why did $NVDA have larger swings? It has to do with the concept called beta. High beta stocks go up faster when the market is up and go down lower when the market is done. Basically high variance risky investments.
Why did the market have these swings? Because of uncertainty about future interest rates. Interest rates not only matter vis-a-vis business loans but affect the interest-free rate for investors.
When investors invest into the stock market, they want to get back the risk free rate (how much they get from treasuries) + the risk premium (how much stocks outperform bonds long term)
If the risks of the stock market are the same, but the payoff of the treasuries changes, then you need a high return from stocks. To get a higher return you can only accept a lower price,
This is why stocks are down, NVDA is still making plenty of money in AI
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
There’s more to it as well, such as:
- investors coming back from vacation and selling off losses and whatnot
- investors expecting reduced spending between summer and holidays; we’re past the “back to school” retail bump and into a slower retail economy
September is pretty consistently more volatile than other months, and has net negative returns long-term. So it’s not just the Fed discussing rate cuts (that news was reported over the last couple months, so it should be factored in), but just normal sideways trading in September.
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Its all vibes and manipulation
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’ve noticed people have been talking less and less about AI lately, particularly online and in the media, and absolutely nobody has been talking about it in real life.
The novelty has well and truly worn off, and most people are sick of hearing about it.
ultranaut@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The hype is still percolating, at least among the people I work with and at the companies of people I know. Microsoft pushing Copilot everywhere makes it inescapable to some extent in many environments, there’s people out there who have somehow only vaguely heard of ChatGPT and are now encountering LLMs for the first time at work and starting the hype cycle fresh.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It’s like 3D TVs, for a lot of consumer applications tbh
marx2k@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Oh fuck that’s right, that was a thing.
Goddamn
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yeah, now we are gonna get the reality of deep fakes; fun times.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Welp, it was ‘fun’ while it lasted. Time for everyone to adjust their expectations to much more humble levels than was promised and move on to the next sceme. After Metaverse, NFTs and ‘Don’t become a programmer, AI will still your job literally next week!11’, I’m eager to see what they come up with next. And with eager I mean I’m tired. I’m really tired and hope the economy just takes a damn break from breaking things.
Fetus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I just hope I can buy a graphics card without having to sell organs some time in the next two years.
macrocephalic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Don’t count on it. It turns out that the sort of stuff that graphics cards do is good for lots of things, it was crypto, then AI and I’m sure whatever the next fad is will require a GPU to run huge calculations.
Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I’d love an upgrade for my 2080 TI, really wish Nvidia didn’t piss off EVGA into leaving the GPU business…
catloaf@lemm.ee 2 months ago
My RX 580 has been working just fine since I bought it used. I’ve not been able to justify buying a new (used) one.
sheogorath@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If there is even a GPU being sold. It’s much more profitable for Nvidia to just make compute focused chips than upgrading their gaming lineup. GeForce will just get the compute chips rejects and laptop GPU for the lower end parts. After the AI bubble burst, maybe they’ll get back to their gaming roots.
dustyData@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But if it doesn’t disrupt it isn’t worth it!
/s
utopiah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
move on to the next […] eager to see what they come up with next.
That’s a point I’m making in a lot of conversations lately : IMHO the bubble didn’t pop BECAUSE capital doesn’t know where to go next. Despite reports from big banks that there is a LOT of investment for not a lot of actual returns, people are still waiting on where to put that money next. Until there is such a place, they believe it’s still more beneficial to keep the bet on-going.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
AI doesn’t need to steal all programmer jobs next week, but I have much doubt there will still be many available in 2044 when even just LLMs still have so many things that they can improve on in the next 20 years.
4vgj0e@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I find it insane when “tech bros” and AI researchers at major tech companies try to justify the wasting of resources (like water and electricity) in order to achieve “AGI” or whatever the fuck that means in their wildest fantasies.
These companies have no accountability for the shit that they do and consistently ignore all the consequences their actions will cause for decades down the road.
catloaf@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It’s research. Most of it never pans out, so a lot of it is “wasteful”. But if we didn’t experiment, we wouldn’t find the things that do work.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Most of the entire AI economy isn’t even research. It’s just grift. Slapping a label on ChatGPT and saying you’re an AI company. It’s hustlers trying to make a quick buck from easy venture capital money.
4vgj0e@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I agree, but these researchers/scientists should be more mindful about the resources they use up in order to generate the computational power necessary to carry out their experiments. AI is good when it gets utilized to achieve a specific task, but funneling a lot of money and research towards general purpose AI just seems wasteful.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t think I’ve heard a lot of actual research in the AI area not connected to machine learning (which may be just one component, not really necessary at that).
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
What’s funny is that we already have general intelligence in billions of brains. What tech bros what is a general intelligence slave.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well put.
I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to be a personal assistant for searching, summarizing, and compiling information, as long as they were adequately paid for it.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Teal@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Too much optimism and hype may lead to the premature use of technologies that are not ready for prime time.
— Daron Acemoglu, MIT
Preach!
Grofit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A lot of the AI boom is like the DotCom boom of the Web era. The bubble burst and a lot of companies lost money but the technology is still very much important and relevant to us all.
AI feels a lot like that, it’s here to stay, maybe not in th ways investors are touting, but for voice, image, video synthesis/processing it’s an amazing tool. It also has lots of applications in biotech, targetting systems, logistics etc.
So I can see the bubble bursting and a lot of money being lost, but that is the point when actually useful applications of the technology will start becoming mainstream.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I’m glad someone else is acknowledging that AI can be an amazing tool. Every time I see AI mentioned on lemmy, people say that it’s entirely useless and they don’t understand why it exists or why anyone talks about it at all. I mention I use ChatGPT daily for my programming job, it’s helpful like having an intern do work for me, etc, and I just get people disagreeing with me all day long lol
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The bubble burst and a lot of companies lost money but the technology is still very much important and relevant to us all.
The DotCom bubble was built around the idea of online retail outpacing traditional retail far faster than it did, in fact. But it was, at its essence, a system of digital book keeping. Book your orders, manage your inventory, and direct your shipping via a more advanced and interconnected set of digital tools.
The fundamentals of the business - production, shipping, warehousing, distribution, the mathematical process of accounting - didn’t change meaningfully from the days of the Sears-Roebuck. Online was simply a new means of marketing. It worked well, but not nearly as well as was predicted. What Amazon did to achieve hegemony was to run losses for ten years, while making up the balance as a government sponsored series of data centers (re: AWS) and capitalize on discount bulk shipping through the USPS before accruing enough physical capital to supplant even the big box retailers. The digital front-end was always a loss-leader. Nobody is actually turning a profit on Amazon Prime. It’s just a hook to get you into the greater Amazon ecosystem.
Pivot to AI, and you’ve got to ask… what are we actually improving on? It’s not a front-end. It’s not a data-service that anyone benefits from. It is hemorrhaging billions of dollars just at OpenAI alone (one reason why it was incorporated as a Non-Profit to begin with - THERE WAS NO PROFIT). Maybe you can leverage this clunky behemoth into… low-cost mass media production? But its also extremely low-rent production, in an industry where - once again - marketing and advertisement are what command the revenue you can generate on a finished product.
Maybe you can argue that AI provides some kind of hook to drive retail traffic into a more traditional economic model. But I’m still waiting to see what that is. After that, I’m looking at AI in the same way I’m looking at Crypto or VR. Just a gimmick that’s scaring more people off than it drags in.
Grofit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t mean it’s like the dotcom bubble in terms of context, I mean in terms of feel. Dotcom had loads of investors scrambling to “get in on it” many not really understanding why or what it was worth but just wanted quick wins.
This has same feel, a bit like crypto as you say but I would say crypto is very niche in real world applications at the moment whereas AI does have real world usages.
They are not the ones we are being fed in the mainstream like it replacing coders or artists, it can help in those areas but it’s just them trying to keep the hype going. Realistically it can be used very well for some medical research and diagnosis scenarios, as it can correlate patterns very easily showing likelyhood of genetic issues.
The game and media industry are very much trialling for voice and image synthesis for improving environmental design (texture synthesis) and providing dynamic voice synthesis based off actors likenesses. We have had peoples likenesses in movies for decades via cgi but it’s only really now we can do the same but for voices and this isn’t getting into logistics and/or financial where it is also seeing a lot of application.
Its not going to do much for the end consumer outside of the guff you currently use siri or alexa for etc, but inside the industries AI is very useful.
PaulBlartFartTart@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
The funny thing about Amazon, is we are phasing it out of our home now. Because it has become an online 7Eleven. You don’t pay for shipping and it comes fast, but you are often paying 50-100% more for everything. If you use AliExpress, 300-400% more… just to get it a week or two faster. I would rather go to local retailers that are increasing Chinese goods for a 150% profit, than Amazon and pay 300%. It just means I have to leave the house for 30 minutes.
criticalthreshold@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Google Search is such an important facet for Alphabet that they must invest as many billions as they can to lead the new generative-AI search. IMO for Google it’s more than just a growth opportunity, it’s a necessity.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
I guess I don’t really see why generative AI is a necessity for a search engine? It doesn’t really help me find information any faster than a Wikipedia summary, and is less reliable.
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
“AI” is what put Google into trouble to begin with… Sure, let’s double-down on the shittiness, I don’t see how anything could go wrong.
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Personally I can’t wait for a few good bankruptcies so I can pick up a couple of high end data centre GPUs for cents on the dollar
bruhduh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Search Nvidia p40 24gb on eBay, 200$ each and surprisingly good for selfhosted llm, if you plan to build array of gpus then search for p100 16gb, same price but unlike p40, p100 supports nvlink, and these 16gb is hbm2 memory with 4096bit bandwidth so it’s still competitive in llm field
Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Lowest price on Ebay for me is 290 Euro :/ The p100 are 200 each though.
Do you happen to know if I could mix a 3700 with a p100?
And thanks for the tips!
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Thanks for the tips! I’m looking for something multi-purpose for LLM/stable diffusion messing about + transcoder for jellyfin - I’m guessing that there isn’t really a sweet spot for those 3. I don’t really have room or power budget for 2 cards, so I guess a P40 is probably the best bet?
hellothere@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Pop pop!
fogelmensch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Magnitude!
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 2 months ago
FMO is the best explanation of this psychosis and then of course denial by people who became heavily invested in it. Stuff like LLMs or ConvNets (and the likes) can already be used to do some pretty amazing stuff that we could not do a decade ago. I am also not against exploring and pushing the boundaries, but when you explore a boundary while pretending like you have already crossed it, that is how you get bubbles. And this again all boils down to appeasing some cancerous billionaire shareholder so they funnel down some money to your pockets.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 months ago
there is really no need shit rainbows and puke glitter all over it
I’m now picturing the unicorn from the Squatty Potty commercial, with violent diarrhea and vomiting.
utopiah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Stuff like LLMs or ConvNets (and the likes) can already be used to do some pretty amazing stuff that we could not do a decade ago, there is really no need to shit rainbows and puke glitter all over it.
I’m shitting rainbows and puking glitter on a daily basis BUT it’s not against AI as a field, it’s not against AI research, rather it’s against :
- catastrophism and fear, even eschatology, used as a marketing tactic
- open systems and research that become close
- trying to lock a market with legislation
- people who use a model, especially a model they don’t even have e.g using a proprietary API, and claim they are an AI startup
- C-levels decision that anything now must include AI
- claims that this or that skill is soon to be replaced by AI with actually no proof of it
- meaningless test results with grand claim like “passing the bar exam” used as marketing tactics
- claims that it scales, it “just needs more data”, not for .1% improvement but for radical change, e.g emergent learning
- for-profit (different from public research) scrapping datasets without paying back anything to actual creators
- ignoring or lying about non renewable resource consumption for both training and inference
- relying on “free” or loss leader strategies to dominate a market
- promoting to be doing the work for the good of humanity then signing exclusive partnership with a corporation already fined for monopoly practices
I’m sure I’m forgetting a few but basically none of those criticism are technical. None of those criticism is about the current progress made. Rather, they are about business practices.
nobleshift@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Can we please get rid of the tech bros too?
yamanii@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But the trillion dollar valued Nvidia…
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think they’re going to be bankrupt within 5 years. They have way too much invested in this bubble.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Maybe we can have normal priced graphics cards again.
I’m tired of people pretending £600 is a reasonable price to pay for a mid range GPU.
DogWater@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m not sure, these companies are building data centers with so many gpus that they have to be geo located with respect to the power grid because if it were all done in one place it would take the grid down.
And they are just building more.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 months ago
$2.5T currently to be exact
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Nvidia is diversified in AI, though. Disregarding LLM, it’s likely that other AI methodologies will depend even more on their tech or similar.
ReCursing@lemmings.world 2 months ago
Hopefully this means the haters will shut up and we can get on with using it for useful stuff
riodoro1@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Shitty useless pictures each costing kilowatt hours.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You’re no no longer using the term Luddite on us! Character development!
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 2 months ago
Argh, after 25 years in tech I am surprised this keeps surprising you.
We’ve crested for sure. AI isn’t going to solve everything. AI stock will fall. Investor pressure to put AI into everything will subside.
The we will start looking at AI as a cost benefit analysis. We will start applying it where it makes sense. Things will get optimised. Real profit and long term change will happen over 5-10 years. And afterwards, the utter magical will seem mundane while everyone is chasing the next hype cycle.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s like the least popular opinion I have here on Lemmy, but I assure you, this is the begining.
Yes, we’ll see a dotcom style bust. But it’s not like the world today wasn’t literally invented in that time. Do you remember where image generation was 3 years ago? It was a complete joke compared to a year ago, and today, fuck no one here would know.
When code generation goes through that same cycle, you can put out an idea in plain language, and get back code that just “does” it.
I have no idea what that means for the future of my humanity.
LemmyBe@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wether we like it or not AI is here to stay, and in 20-30 years, it’ll be as embedded in our lives as much as computers and smartphones.
vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 months ago
A.I., Assumed Intelligence
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well, they also kept telling investors all they need to simulate a human brain was to simulate the amount of neurons in a human brain…
The stupidly rich loved that, because they want computer backups for “immortality”. And they’d dump billions of dollars into making that happen
About two months ago tho, we found out that the brain uses microtubules in the brain to put tryptophan into super position, and it can maintain that for like a crazy amount of time, like longer than we can do in a lab.
The only argument against a quantum component for human consciousness, was people thought there was no way to have even just get regular quantum entanglement in a human brain.
We’ll be lucky to be able to simulate that stuff in 50 years, but it’s probably going to be even longer.
Every billionaire who wanted to “live forever” this way, just got aged out. So they’ll throw their money somewhere else now.
umbraroze@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Have any regular users actually looked at the prices of the “AI services” and what they actually cost?
I’m a writer. I’ve looked at a few of the AI services aimed at writers. These companies literally think they can get away with “Just Another Streaming Service” pricing, in an era where people are getting really really sceptical about subscribing to yet another streaming service and cancelling the ones they don’t care about that much. As a broke ass writer, I was glad that, with NaNoWriMo discount, I could buy Scrivener for €20 instead of regular price of €40. [note: regular price of Scrivener is apparently €70 now, and this is pretty aggravating.] So why are NaNoWriMo pushing ProWritingAid, a service that runs €10-€12 per month? This is definitely out of the reach of broke ass writers.
Someone should tell the AI companies that regular people don’t want to subscribe to random subscription services any more.
DogPeePoo@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Wall Street has already milked “the pump” now they short it and put out articles like this
potentiallynotfelix@lemdro.id 2 months ago
I don’t think AI is ever going to completely disappear, but I think we’ve hit the barrier of usefulness for now.
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I’m just praying people will fucking quit it with the worries that we’re about to get SKYNET or HAL when binary computing would inherently be incapable of recreating the fast pattern recognition required to replicate or outpace human intelligence.
Moore’s law is about similar computing power, which is a measure of hardware performance, not of the software you can run on it.
PenisDuckCuck9001@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
I just want computer parts to stop being so expensive
felixwhynot@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Archive link to avoid paywall: archive.is/…/the-air-begins-to-leak-out-of-the-ov…
billbennett@piefed.social 2 months ago
I've spent time with an AI laptop the past couple of weeks and 'overinflated' seems a generous description of where end user AI is today.
sweetpotato@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
So should we be fearing a new crash?
P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 2 months ago
What do people mean with “AI bubble”?
Turbonics@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
The more you bAI
masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Thank fucking god.
I got sick of the overhyped tech bros pumping AI into everything with no understanding of it…
But then I got way more sick of everyone else thinking they’re clowning on AI when in reality they’re just demonstrating an equal sized misunderstanding of the technology in a snarky pessimistic format.
simplejack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m more annoyed that Nvidia is looked at like some sort of brilliant strategist. It’s a GPU company that was lucky enough to be around when two new massive industries found an alternative use for graphics hardware.
They happened to be making pick axes in California right before some prospectors found gold.
And they don’t even really make pick axes, TSMC does. They just design them.
utopiah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s not trivial though. They also managed to lock dev with CUDA.
That being said I don’t think they were “just” lucky, I think they built their luck through practices the DoJ is currently investigating for potential abuse of monopoly.
Zarxrax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They didn’t just “happen to be around”. They created the entire ecosystem around machine learning while AMD just twiddled their thumbs. There is a reason why no one is buying AMD cards to run AI workloads.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Go ahead and design a better pickaxe than them, we’ll wait…
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Imo we should give credit where credit is due and I agree, not a genius, still my pick is a 4080 for a new gaming computer.
sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
As I job-hunt, every job listed over the past year has been “AI-drive [something]” and I’m really hoping that trend subsides.
AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“This is an mid level position requiring at least 7 years experience developing LLMs.” -Every software engineer job out there.
lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The tech bros had to find an excuse to use all the GPUs they got for crypto after they bled that dry
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
If that’s the reason, I wouldn’t even be mad, that’s recycling right there.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’m not a fan of BTC but $50,000+ doesn’t seem very dry to me.