Sam Altman:
A lot of people want local inference, and somehow they assume that the problem is solved now because we have open-source models, we’re going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we’re not going to need all the stuff in the data center.
But from a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time.
Like you want maximum utilisation in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment,
And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that
TL;DR Guy selling product: “Here’s why owning your own product instead of renting it from me is a terrible idea”
I fully agree to Sam Altman. Thats why I use chinese models in european data centers 🇪🇺
McDonald’s can probably make hamburgers more efficiently than everyone can at home, but I’m not eating that shit any more than I’m giving Sam Altman my money or data.
Oh damn! Now there’s an analogy!
McDonald’s does but its still more expensive than making hamburgers at home, why?
Because profit motive is an inefficiency.
Profit motive is also a misallocation of limited resources. Regular soup kitchens can feed hundreds of people at the cost of only a few dollars per portion. The only advantage they have is buying wholesale. Imagine spawning out of thin air a nonprofit with the vertical integration and logistics of McDonalds. How many people could it feed for next to nothing?
Funny how there weren’t any systemic supply issues until someone decided to buy up all the RAM …
I was going to say that with swearing and all caps, thank you for keeping it classy.
This fucking guy needs to suck a tailpipe
Personal computers are a ridiculous idea, you should use our scalable mainframes instead --IBM in the 80s, probably
There’s certainly nothing enjoyable to do on an AS400
As someone that makes use of an AS400 (well i series), I can confirm that there is no fun to be had.
I haven’t seen the real thing in almost 30 years, but the company I work for uses the emulation and it has no noticeable improvements.
Crazy as it is. you can still get the (slightly modernized) hardware. IBM just makes too much money to stop supporting it.
Wow, that’s awful
And who made those resources scarce, Sam? WHO MADE THEM SCARCE???
also screw you for trying to make the answer to ‘How should those resources be allocated?’ be ‘In the way that best enriches me personally’.
It kind of blows my mind how our society is set up to give the most power to the worst people.
A lot of people want to be billionaires, and somehow they assume the problem is solved because we have unfettered predatory late stage capitalism and oligarchy in America, we’re going to be able to amass as much money as we want in our bank accounts, and so we’re all going to be rich without oversight, accountability or government interference.
But from a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s wealth sitting in a few private bank accounts and being used .05% of the time.
Like you want maximum circulation of currency if you’re trying to reduce inequality in this artificial scarcity environment,
And somehow, Americans’ intuitions are the opposite of that.
FTFY Sam.
This is genuinely a fantastic response that is also absolutely correct in its premise
Except that most of their “money” is parts of the company, it “works”. It only gets dangerous, if the economy is bad and people keep their (real) money, accelerating it further.
Funny because it’s true
Sam Altman is a terrible utilization of scarce resources.
I want to use ram for things unrelated to AI you fucking prick.
new title:
“Man whose company lost $20b in previous year explains how to allocate resources.”
It’s true what he says and not just about RAM but about anything you own.
My car isn’t driving most of the time. My drill isn’t drilling most of the time and my oven is off most of the time.
That’s a huge waste of resources in a macro economic kind of way.
You can’t argue with the correctness of his statement. You need other arguments. These arguments exist.
Right, so the logical response would be to collectively own them. But that’s not what this parasite wants.
I like the idea of collectively owning the computing power!
Would be nice to be able to buy part of a datacenter instead of renting it.
heh actually working on some stuff to support that as an offshoot of our Neighborgoods project - calling it Neighborcloud, with the idea that people can check out and use capacity like a library item. Including, hopefully, some AI model use.
was talking to someone today about putting your idle computer up for “cloud inference” but he was thinking about how he doesn’t want to run his GPU too much because of wear and tear and ability to replace it
expensive hardware is a problem in any case
See, the thing is though, all of these things are designed with some kind of running hours in mind. If a car is used more, it’ll wear our faster so it’s either using it a lot in a short time or less in a long time, its utility ends up being the same so there’s no direct gain from not letting it sit idle. That’s why passive robotaxis are a pretty dumb idea.
But yes there are things that really only wear out from time spent existing. A pencil’s lifespan is purely defined from its use, a cast iron pan can pretty much be used indefinitely. Cars and drills are more like pencils imo. RAM might be more like a cast iron pan though, although trace erosion is still a thing.
server hardware is definitely different from consumer hardware. same natural resources probably but built different.
CEO of Pizza Hut says making pizzas at home is a terrible allocation of resources.
“Raping your own siblings at home is terribly inefficient when we have private islands where we can keep and rape other people’s siblings.”
And there it is.
“We made components scarce, so you have no choice but to use our cloud services where we control everything and you rent the privilege from us.”
Literally called it. Fuck these assholes with everything rusty.
Cory Doctorow predicted this fifteen years ago, although in a different context (transcript here).
Sam Altman is an example of a terrible allocation of resources. Think of how much oxygen and dihydrogen monoxide he consumes? And for what? He just needlessly produces carbon dioxide in record amounts. The elementary particles that make up the sack of biotic matter that calls itself Samuel would be better suited for other applications. Agriculture comes to mind.
we lost Captain Picard yesterday, yet this lazy-eyed cardboard human gets to keep using oxygen. there is no justice in this world.
