From an efficiency POV it absolutely is significantly better to concentrate compute power in data centers, because when you’re not using it then somebody else can. When those resources are in your private computer, it sits idle most of the time with all it’s potential wasted.
that being said, he can go eat a hot ball of lead. Fuck him for wanting to take away peoples free access to compute power.
Who needs AI on all the time?! Oh, I know. No one! It’s the reason why energy costs are high and resources are being wasted/reallocated on a regular. Most private models would be utilized only when needed and only by those that have a justifiable need for it. Not on for the sake of being on. We don’t need an AI summary of the history and purpose of a fucking saucepan. But we get it whenever someone types it in search to find where to buy one.
This isn’t necessarily true. You can have your AI machine doing other things or turn it off when you aren’t using it. It could probably increase efficiency if people were affected by how much energy it uses to write their emails, they might only use it for when they actually need it.
If you have a hammer in your shed, are you depriving your neighbor of a hammer? Your neighbor can get their own hammer, and you’d both be better off than if you had to go rent one from the local hammer monger.
Altman is creating the RAM shortage that he points to as justification for hoarding all the RAM. It’s a circular argument. If he didn’t manufacture scarcity, then everyone would be able to have their own RAM.
He’s the only one in this situation depriving anyone of compute power, and it’s because he wants to rent it all back to them. (Yes, Musk, Zuck, Bezos, and Pichai are guilty here too).
I’m sorry, your first statement is a little weird. If there are actually only enough resources to produce 1 hammer, yes, of course you’re depriving your neighbor of a hammer and it’d be better for both of you to share it.
The rest of your argument is obviously fine, just the first part doesn’t make sense.
What if there are enough resources to produce thousands of hammers, but the hammer monger decided to buy up all the production capacity, thereby creating the scarcity being discussed, and then goes on to say that if you own a hammer, you’re depriving your neighbors?
Let’s agree to disagree. When off, it’s saving power. I used to be one of those that kept my computer on sleep and only turned it off through a restart for upgrades, or to take it apart and clean it. That was me being lazy and giving 0 fucks about resources and the common good. Not anymore.
I recently started putting my new desktop on suspend, after turning my old one into a server that’s on 24/7. Mustn’t keep two computers on at 24/7 now, right?
Yes that precious silicon, the rarest of earthen elements of which we have so little.
And of course the fabrication of semiconducting integrated circuits, which was always in such high demand that prices kept all the peasants from being able to operate any.
Such powers should be reserved for those with superior power and ways of thinking anyway, don’t you agree?
It’s way less thermally efficient though… Individual computers in people’s houses running lighter workloads don’t get as hot, and when they do, they don’t need to stay operating for as long: they can just shut down or slow down after the heavy workload, or finish it more slowly. So they don’t need as much cooling, and will produce less waste heat due to the temperature coefficient of resistance.
So they don’t need as much cooling, and will produce less waste heat due to the temperature coefficient of resistance.
And honestly in areas with colder year-round climates, the increase in ambient temps from running locally might actually reduce heating bills because it’s technically doing double duty of doing a job and heating the place.
People can still use any of the Gpu cloud renting stuff/mining to sell their Gpu function so it can still be utilized efficiently. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
And if many people want to use at same time? Less efficient? E waste wise less efficient too. Cooling wise less efficient too as you have to move all cooling tools to one place from many places, the setting has to be perfect too.
And let me tell you that they are not in idle only 18% of time
From a hardware utilisation perspective, sure.
There was a time where people only had their devices on for a few hours a day. And you know why no-one cared? Because people could buy as much hardware as they wanted. When supply eventually match demand again, no-one will care again.
Isn’t this assuming that we all get unlimited perfect network capacity for free? Most folks have decent connectivity most of the time but moving to a universal thin client model makes a lot of assumptions about our current network infrustructue and our political and financial capacity to improve it. But this out of touch moron hasn’t had to live without multiple redundant commercial quality pipes running to his home and office for decades.
You’re only thinking about the occupancy part of efficient use of available resources (and even then only partially) and forgetting all about the utility value part.
RAM used 100% of the time is not more efficiently used than RAM used 10% of the time if it’s being used for activities that deliver much lower utility, something made even worse because using RAM consumes additional resources in the form of power hence running it isn’t actually free and you if the utility of it’s use is lower you might actually be destroying value by using that power for a much lower utility use than it could otherwise be used for.
That’s the point others are making by pointing out that if that RAM is in data centers running AI 100% of the time it might actually be in use less efficiently than RAM used for multiple activities in people’s computers at home where it’s idle most of the time.
Yours is basically the same fallacy as the one about how people working more hours per day means they’re producing more.
“More use” is not the same as “more value created” because time is far from the only factor in determining how much value is created.
PS: If you really dig down into the utility value for Mankind of most modern day computing you’ll find that a large fraction if not most of it is basically entertainment, gambling or some for addition and thus doesn’t produce actual economic value. For example, how exactly does social networking such as Facebook produce economic value for Mankind - it’s basically a mix of entertainment and an addiction that directly creates or help create nothing, and instead it mainly wastes people’s time. At best it could indirectly deliver value by improving worker efficiency in activities that actually create value because people were happier with Facebook than without it, but by all indication that’s not even the case as it’s creating epidemics of psychological and social problems especially amongst young people. Those things are extracting value rather than creating value, so the computer RAM running Facebook software is probably a net negative in value creation overall - it creates little or no value overall (it extracts value from some to others but doesn’t actually create any) whilst consuming power to run, and all of those factors put together might mean that in overall value creation terms that RAM being idle or even in the refuse bin would actually be better than being used for Facebook software.
From an efficiency POV it absolutely is significantly better to concentrate compute power in data centers, because when you’re not using it then somebody else can. When those resources are in your private computer, it sits idle most of the time with all it’s potential wasted.
that being said, he can go eat a hot ball of lead. Fuck him for wanting to take away peoples free access to compute power.
I think I’ve seen decentralized computing where you can rent inference that is available somewhere else , which would tackle that problem
Efficiency for whom? A thief holding a bank teller up at gunpoint is more efficient than working a 9 to 5.
Who needs AI on all the time?! Oh, I know. No one! It’s the reason why energy costs are high and resources are being wasted/reallocated on a regular. Most private models would be utilized only when needed and only by those that have a justifiable need for it. Not on for the sake of being on. We don’t need an AI summary of the history and purpose of a fucking saucepan. But we get it whenever someone types it in search to find where to buy one.
This isn’t necessarily true. You can have your AI machine doing other things or turn it off when you aren’t using it. It could probably increase efficiency if people were affected by how much energy it uses to write their emails, they might only use it for when they actually need it.
when its turned off, the potential is still lost, because it’s not doing anything but the physical resources (the materials) are still spent.
If you have a hammer in your shed, are you depriving your neighbor of a hammer? Your neighbor can get their own hammer, and you’d both be better off than if you had to go rent one from the local hammer monger.
Altman is creating the RAM shortage that he points to as justification for hoarding all the RAM. It’s a circular argument. If he didn’t manufacture scarcity, then everyone would be able to have their own RAM.
He’s the only one in this situation depriving anyone of compute power, and it’s because he wants to rent it all back to them. (Yes, Musk, Zuck, Bezos, and Pichai are guilty here too).
That can apply only to food. Other things mentioned are just stupid. Why we have to use it 100% right now?
I’m sorry, your first statement is a little weird. If there are actually only enough resources to produce 1 hammer, yes, of course you’re depriving your neighbor of a hammer and it’d be better for both of you to share it.
The rest of your argument is obviously fine, just the first part doesn’t make sense.
What if there are enough resources to produce thousands of hammers, but the hammer monger decided to buy up all the production capacity, thereby creating the scarcity being discussed, and then goes on to say that if you own a hammer, you’re depriving your neighbors?
What part of “the rest of the argument is obviously fine” didn’t you understand? :D
Let’s agree to disagree. When off, it’s saving power. I used to be one of those that kept my computer on sleep and only turned it off through a restart for upgrades, or to take it apart and clean it. That was me being lazy and giving 0 fucks about resources and the common good. Not anymore.
I recently started putting my new desktop on suspend, after turning my old one into a server that’s on 24/7. Mustn’t keep two computers on at 24/7 now, right?
I mean it depends. If you got solar and a battery or some other renewable option, run as many computers for as long as you want.
We live in an apartment building so, no direct control over energy source. Although the building does have solar panels on the roof. 😅
Yes that precious silicon, the rarest of earthen elements of which we have so little.
And of course the fabrication of semiconducting integrated circuits, which was always in such high demand that prices kept all the peasants from being able to operate any.
Such powers should be reserved for those with superior power and ways of thinking anyway, don’t you agree?
Are you arguing that advanced chip fabrication is not a limited resource?
It was not before bitcoin and Ai scam. So yes?
lol no
It’s way less thermally efficient though… Individual computers in people’s houses running lighter workloads don’t get as hot, and when they do, they don’t need to stay operating for as long: they can just shut down or slow down after the heavy workload, or finish it more slowly. So they don’t need as much cooling, and will produce less waste heat due to the temperature coefficient of resistance.
And honestly in areas with colder year-round climates, the increase in ambient temps from running locally might actually reduce heating bills because it’s technically doing double duty of doing a job and heating the place.
Literally had mild winters where the computer running could keep a single room comfortably warm.
It’s getting cold in Canada, but playing civ 6 is my version of getting warm by the fire.
I’m gaming a lot. Can confirm, almost no heating bill, but high electricity bill
Sheesh! One unit of computing =one unit of heat. The total units of computing are the same, the concentration differs. Thermodynamics, dude!
Ignorance is not bad, it can be reversed. It’s confident ignorance like yours that scares me.
Just to introduce another factor: transitioning between hot and cold introduces wear that might be worse that running warm-to-hot constantly.
I don’t think the wear is that significant, unless it has a bad solder defect somewhere.
This is completely unrelated, but I hope I’m dead before using “compute” as a noun sounds normal to me.
If it’s too important to squander resources, it’s too important to privatize.
People…dont want access to ai tho…
People can still use any of the Gpu cloud renting stuff/mining to sell their Gpu function so it can still be utilized efficiently. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
And if many people want to use at same time? Less efficient? E waste wise less efficient too. Cooling wise less efficient too as you have to move all cooling tools to one place from many places, the setting has to be perfect too. And let me tell you that they are not in idle only 18% of time
From a hardware utilisation perspective, sure. There was a time where people only had their devices on for a few hours a day. And you know why no-one cared? Because people could buy as much hardware as they wanted. When supply eventually match demand again, no-one will care again.
Isn’t this assuming that we all get unlimited perfect network capacity for free? Most folks have decent connectivity most of the time but moving to a universal thin client model makes a lot of assumptions about our current network infrustructue and our political and financial capacity to improve it. But this out of touch moron hasn’t had to live without multiple redundant commercial quality pipes running to his home and office for decades.
You’re only thinking about the occupancy part of efficient use of available resources (and even then only partially) and forgetting all about the utility value part.
RAM used 100% of the time is not more efficiently used than RAM used 10% of the time if it’s being used for activities that deliver much lower utility, something made even worse because using RAM consumes additional resources in the form of power hence running it isn’t actually free and you if the utility of it’s use is lower you might actually be destroying value by using that power for a much lower utility use than it could otherwise be used for.
That’s the point others are making by pointing out that if that RAM is in data centers running AI 100% of the time it might actually be in use less efficiently than RAM used for multiple activities in people’s computers at home where it’s idle most of the time.
Yours is basically the same fallacy as the one about how people working more hours per day means they’re producing more.
“More use” is not the same as “more value created” because time is far from the only factor in determining how much value is created.
PS: If you really dig down into the utility value for Mankind of most modern day computing you’ll find that a large fraction if not most of it is basically entertainment, gambling or some for addition and thus doesn’t produce actual economic value. For example, how exactly does social networking such as Facebook produce economic value for Mankind - it’s basically a mix of entertainment and an addiction that directly creates or help create nothing, and instead it mainly wastes people’s time. At best it could indirectly deliver value by improving worker efficiency in activities that actually create value because people were happier with Facebook than without it, but by all indication that’s not even the case as it’s creating epidemics of psychological and social problems especially amongst young people. Those things are extracting value rather than creating value, so the computer RAM running Facebook software is probably a net negative in value creation overall - it creates little or no value overall (it extracts value from some to others but doesn’t actually create any) whilst consuming power to run, and all of those factors put together might mean that in overall value creation terms that RAM being idle or even in the refuse bin would actually be better than being used for Facebook software.