Technology

40737 readers

459 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

remington@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

OpenAI signs $1 trillion worth of chip deals to feed its AI habit (www.fudzilla.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

These numbers don't make any sense to me, as the hed is about buying lots of chips, and the body is about power use. No matter how you slice it, $8.76/kWh is a terrible fucking investment ... if that's chip-inclusive, that's another story.

Still, the audacity of saying "we're going to invest $1 trillion" is Dr. Evil-level humour.

OpenAI is signing about $1 trillion (€940 billion) in deals this year for computing power to keep its artificial intelligence dreams humming.

On Monday the outfit inked a deal with AMD which follows earlier tie-ups with Nvidia, Oracle and CoreWeave, as Sam Altman’s outfit scrambles to secure enough silicon to keep ChatGPT online and the hype machine alive.

The latest commitments would give OpenAI access to more than 20 gigawatts of computing capacity over the next decade, roughly the output of 20 nuclear reactors. At about $50 billion per gigawatt, according to OpenAI’s estimates, the total tab hits that $1 trillion figure.

Analysts are not convinced this financial engineering makes any sense. DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria said: “OpenAI is in no position to make any of these commitments,” adding that it could lose about $10 billion this year.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's strange that the concept of efficiency seems to have been abandoned. Is consumption of vast computing resources no longer seen as indication of a design flaw?

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Cost efficiency is all there is now

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have to doubt the cost efficiency too.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Do you reckon openai could get cheaper power or gpus? Or something else? Could nvidia get lower production costs for these?

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm talking about the software side of things. Generative "AI" seems to be a "brute force" approach to artificial intelligence - just throwing hardware at the problem instead of finding a better approach. Given the limitations of GenAI, it just feels crazy to keep going this way. Like a sunk-cost fallacy. These are just my thoughts though, not a real scientific analysis.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago

Recent advancements using "dynamic sparsity" or "selective activation" approaches increase efficiency beyond "brute force". This is how China began to compete without anywhere near the number of GPUs or power.

[–] tangentism@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago

Read elsewhere that openai are trying to buy themselves ahead enough to outlast the bubble popping.

Seems that everything else is sacrificed from that end.

Will be hilarious if they are one of the first to go!