cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53805638
I really hope this is the beginning of a massive correction on AI hype.
It’s a reaction to thinking China has better AI, not thinking AI has less value.
Or from the sounds of it, doing things more efficiently.
Fewer cycles required, less hardware required.
Maybe this was an inevitability, if you cut off access to the fast hardware, you create a natural advantage for more efficient systems.
That’s generally how tech goes though. You throw hardware at the problem until it works, and then you optimize it to run on laptops and eventually phones. Usually hardware improvements and software optimizations meet somewhere in the middle.
Look at photo and video editing, you used to need a workstation for that, and now you can get most of it on your phone. Surely AI is destined to follow the same path, with local models getting more and more robust until eventually the beefy cloud services are no longer required.
China really has nothing to do with it, it could have been anyone. It’s a reaction to realizing that GPT4-equivalent AI models are dramatically cheaper to train than previously thought.
It being China is a noteable detail because it really drives the nail in the coffin for NVIDIA, since China has been fenced off from having access to NVIDIA’s most expensive AI GPUs that were thought to be required to pull this off.
It also makes the USA gov look extremely foolish to have made major foreign policy and relationship sacrifices in order to try to delay China by a few years, when it’s January and China has already caught up, those sacrifices did not pay off, in fact they backfired and have benefited China and will allow them to accelerate while hurting USA tech/AI companies
It’s a reaction to thinking China has better AI
I don’t think this is the primary reason behind Nvidia’s drop. Because as long as they got a massive technological lead it doesn’t matter as much to them who has the best model, as long as these companies use their GPUs to train them.
The real change is that the compute resources (which is Nvidia’s product) needed to create a great model suddenly fell of a cliff. Whereas until now the name of the game was that more is better and scale is everything.
China vs the West (or upstart vs big players) matters to those who are investing in creating those models. So for example Meta, who presumably spends a ton of money on high paying engineers and data centers, and somehow got upstaged by someone else with a fraction of their resources.
I wouldn’t be surprised if China spent more on AI development than the west did, sure here we spent tens of billions while China only invested a few million but that few million was actually spent on the development while out of the tens of billions all but 5$ was spent on bonuses and yachts.
Does it still need people spending huge amounts of time to train models?
After doing neural networks, fuzzy logic, etc. in university, I really question the whole usability of what is called “AI” outside niche use cases.
Ah, see, the mistake you’re making is actually understanding the topic at hand.
Exactly. Galaxy brains on Wall Street realizing that nvidia’s monopoly pricing power is coming to an end. This was inevitable - China has 4x as many workers as the US, trained in the best labs and best universities in the world, interns at the best companies, then, because of racism, sent back to China. Blocking sales of nvidia chips to China drives them to develop their own hardware, rather than getting them hooked on Western hardware. China’s AI may not be as efficient or as good as the West right now, but it will be cheaper, and it will get better.
It’s coming, Pelosi sold her shares like a month ago.
It’s going to crash, if not for the reasons she sold for, as more and more people hear she sold, they’re going to sell because they’ll assume she has insider knowledge due to her office.
Which is why politicians (and spouses) shouldn’t be able to directly invest into individual companies.
Even if they aren’t doing anything wrong, people will follow them and do what they do. Only a truly ignorant person would believe it doesn’t have an effect on other people.
It’s coming, Pelosi sold her shares like a month ago.
Yeah but only cause she was really disappointed with the 5000 series lineup. Can you blame her for wanting real rasterization improvements?
Everyone’s disappointed with the 5000 series…
They’re giving up on improving rasterazation and focusing on “ai cores” because they’re using gpus to pay for the research into AI.
“Real” core count is going down on the 5000 series.
It’s not what gamers want, but they’re counting on people just buying the newest before asking if newer is really better. It’s why they’re already cutting 4000 series production, they just won’t give people the option.
I think everything under 4070 super is already discontinued
I just hope it means I can get a high end GPU for less than a grand one day.
Prices rarely, if ever, go down and there is a push across the board to offload things “to the cloud” for a range of reasons.
That said: If your focus is on gaming, AMD is REAL good these days and, if you can get past their completely nonsensical naming scheme, you can often get a really good GPU using “last year’s” technology for 500-800 USD (discounted to 400-600 or so).
If anything, this will accelerate the AI hype, as big leaps forward have been made without increased resource usage.
Something is got to give. You can’t spend ~$200 billion annually on capex and get a mere $2-3 billion return on this investment.
I understand that they are searching for a radical breakthrough “that will change everything”, but there is also reasons to be skeptical about this (e.g. documents revealing that Microsoft and OpenAI defined AGI as something that can get them $100 billion in annual revenue as opposed to some specific capabilities).
Good. That shit is way overvalued.
There is no way that Nvidia are worth 3 times as much as TSMC, the company that makes all their shit and more besides.
I’m sure some of my market tracker funds will lose value, and they should, because they should never have been worth this much to start with.
It’s because Nvidia is an American company and also because they make final stage products. American companies right now are all overinflated and almost none of the stocks are worth what they’re at because of foreign trading influence.
As much as people whine about inflation here, the US didn’t get hit as bad as many other countries and we recovered quickly which means that there is a lot of incentive for other countries to invest here. They pick our top movers, they invest in those. What you’re seeing is people bandwagoning onto certain stocks because the consistent gains create more consistent gains for them.
The other part is that yes, companies who make products at the end stage tend to be worth a lot more than people trading more fundamental resources or parts. This is true of almost every industry except oil.
It is also because the USA is the reserve currency of the world with open capital markets.
Savers of the world (including countries like Germany and China who have excess savings due to constrained consumer demand) dump their savings into US assets such as stocks.
This leads to asset bubbles and an uncompetitively high US dollar.
The current administration is working real hard on removing trust and value of anything American.
Shovel vendors scrambling for solid ground as prospectors start to understand geology.
…that is, this isn’t yet the end of the AI bubble. It’s just the end of overvaluing hardware because efficiency increased on the software side, there’s still a whole software-side bubble to contend with.
there’s still a whole software-side bubble to contend with
They’re ultimately linked together in some ways (not all). OpenAI has already been losing money on every GPT subscription that they charge a premium for because they had the best product, now that premium must evaporate because there are equivalent AI products on the market that are much cheaper. This will shake things up on the software side too. They probably need more hype to stay afloat
Quick, wedge crypto in there somehow! That should buy us at least two more rounds of investment.
The software side bubble should take a hit here because:
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Trained model made available for download and offline execution, versus locking it behind a subscription friendly cloud only access. Not the first, but it is more famous.
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It came from an unexpected organization, which throws a wrench in the assumption that one of the few known entities would “win it”.
…that is, this isn’t yet the end of the AI bubble.
The “bubble” in AI is predicated on proprietary software that’s been oversold and underdelivered.
If I can outrun OpenAI’s super secret algorithm with 1/100th the physical resources, the $13B Microsoft handed Sam Altman’s company starts looking like burned capital.
And the way this blows up the reputation of AI hype-artists makes it harder for investors to be induced to send US firms money. Why not contract with Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence directly, rather than ask OpenAI to adopt a model that’s better than anything they’ve produced to date?
I really think GenAI is comparable to the internet in terms of what it will allow mankind in a couple of decades.
Lots of people thought the internet was a fad and saw no future for it …
Lots of techies loved the internet, built it, and were all early adopters. Lots of normies didn’t see the point.
With AI it’s pretty much the other way around: CEOs saying “we don’t need programmers, any more”, while people who understand the tech roll their eyes.
I believe programming languages will become obsolete. You’ll still need professionals that will be experts in leading the machines but not nearly as hands on as presently. The same for a lot of professions that exist currently.
I like to compare GenAI to the assembly line when it was created, but instead of repetitive menial tasks, it’s repetitive mental tasks that it improves/performs.
Sure but you had the .com bubble but it was still useful. Same as AI in a big bubble right now doesn’t mean it won’t be useful.
I don’t know. In a lot of usecase AI is kinda crap, but there’s certain usecase where it’s really good. Honestly I don’t think people are giving enough thought to it’s utility in early-middle stages of creative works where an img2img model can take the basic composition from the artist, render it then the artist can go in and modify and perfect it for the final product. Also video games that use generative AI are going to be insane in about 10-15 years. Imagine an open world game where it generates building interiors and NPCs as you interact with them, even tying the stuff the NPCs say into the buildings they’re in, like an old sailer living in a house with lots of pictures of boats and boat models, or the warrior having tons of books about battle and decorative weapons everywhere all in throw away structures that would have previously been closed set dressing. Maybe they’ll even find sane ways to create quests on the fly that don’t feel overly cookie-cutter? Life changing? Of course not, but definitely a cool technology with a lot of potential
Also realistically I don’t think there’s going to be long term use for AI models that need a quarter of a datacenter just to run, and they’ll all get tuned down to what can run directly on a phone efficiently. Maybe we’ll see some new accelerators become common place maybe we won’t.
Okay seriously this technology still baffles me. Like its cool but why invest so much in an unknown like AIs future ? We could invest in people and education and end up with really smart people. For the cost of an education we could end up with smart people who contribute to the economy and society. Instead we are dumping billions into this shit.
Because rulling class got high on the promise that they could finally eliminate workers as a cost and be independent from us.
They don’t want to get rid of workers because then there would be no consumers. No, they want to increase the downward pressure on wages so they can vacuum up further savings.
Why? If you automatize away (regardless of whether it’s feasible or not) all the workers, what’s stop them for cutting them out of the equation? Why can’t they just trade assets between themselves, maintaining a small slave population that does machine maintenance for food and shelter and screwing the rest? Why do you think they still need us if they own both the means for the production as well as labor to produce? That would be a post-labour scarcity economy, available only for the wealthy and with the rest of us left to rot. If you have assets like land, materials, factories you can participate, if you don’t, you can’t
While I don’t think that this is feasible technologically yet by any means, I think this is what the rich are huffing currently. They want to be independent from us because they are threatened by us.
Tech/Wall St constantly needs something to hype in order to bring in “investor” money. The “new technology-> product development -> product -> IPO” pipeline is now “straight to pump-and-dump” (for example, see Crypto currency).
The excitement of the previous hype train (self-driving cars) is no longer bringing in starry-eyed “investors” willing to quickly part ways with OPM. “AI” made a big splash and Tech/Wall St is going to milk it for all they can lest they fall into the same bad economy as that one company that didn’t jam the letters “AI” into their investor summary.
Tech has laid off a lot of employees, which means they are aware there is nothing else exciting in the near horizon. They also know they have to flog “AI” like crazy before people figure out there’s no “there” there.
That “investors” scattered like frightened birds at the mere mention of a cheaper version means that they also know this is a bubble. Everyone wants the quick money. More importantly they don’t want to be the suckers left holding the bag.
It’s like how revolutionary battery technology is always just months away.
I follow EV battery tech a little. You’re not wrong that there is a lot of “oh its just around the bend” in battery development and tech development in general. I blame marketing for 80% of that.
But battery technology is changing drastically. The giant cell phone market is pushing battery tech relentlessly. Add in EV and grid storage demand growth and the potential for some companies to land on top of a money printing machine is definitely there.
We’re in a golden age of battery research. Exciting for our future, but it will be a while before we consumers will have clear best options.
It’s easier to sell people on the idea of a new technology or system that doesn’t have any historical precedent. All you have to do is list the potential upsides.
Something like a school or a workplace training programme, those are known quantities. There’s a whole bunch of historical and currently-existing projects anyone can look at to gauge the cost. Your pitch has to be somewhat realistic compared to those, or it’s gonna sound really suspect.
Because the silicon valley bros had convinced the national security wonks in the Beltway that it was paramount for national security, technological leadership and economic prosperity.
I think this will go down as the biggest grift in history.
Kevin Walmsley reported on Deepseek 10 days ago. Last week, the smart money exited big tech. This week the panic starts.
I’m getting big dot-com 2.0 vibes from all of this.
And you could pay people to use an abacus instead of a calculator. But the advanced tech improves productivity for everyone, and helps their output.
If you don’t get the tech, you should play with it more.
I get the tech, and still agree with the preposter. I’d even go so far as that it probably worsens a lot currently, as it’s generating a lot of bullshit that sounds great on the surface, but in reality is just regurgitated stuff that the AI has no clue of. For example I’m tired of reading AI generated text, when a hand written version would be much more precise and has some character at least…
Try getting a quick powershell script from Microsoft help or spiceworks. And then do the same on GPT
If you are blindly asking it questions without a grounding resources you’re gonning to get nonsense eventually unless it’s really simple questions.
They aren’t infinite knowledge repositories. The training method is lossy when it comes to memory, just like our own memory.
Give it documentation or some other context and ask it questions it can summerize pretty well and even link things across documents or other sources.
The problem is that people are misusing the technology, not that the tech has no use or merit, even if it’s just from an academic perspective.
It’s one thing to be ignorant. It’s quite another to be confidently so in the face of overwhelming evidence that you’re wrong. Impressive.
“Improves productivity for everyone”
Famously only one class benefits from productivity, while one generates the productivity. Can you explain what you mean, if you don’t mean capitalistic productivity?
I’m referring to output for amount of work put in.
I’m a socialist. I care about increased output leading to increased comfort for the general public. That the gains are concentrated among the wealthy is not the fault of technology, but rather those who control it.
Thank god for DeepSeek.
Look at it in another way, people think this is the start of an actual AI revolution, as in full blown AGI or close to it or something very capable at least. Personally I don’t think we’re anywhere near something like that with the current technology, I think it’s a dead end, but if there’s even a small possibility of it being true, you want to invest early because the returns will be insane if it pans out. Full blown AGI would revolutionize everything, it would probably be the next industrial revolution after the internet.
Look at it in another way, people think this is the start of an actual AI revolution, as in full blown AGI or close to it or something very capable at least
I think the bigger threat of revolution (and counter-revolution) is that of open source software. For people that don’t know anything about FOSS, they’ve been told for decades now that [XYZ] software is a tool you need and that’s only possible through the innovative and superhuman-like intelligent CEOs helping us with the opportunity to buy it.
If everyone finds out that they’re actually the ones stifling progress and development, while manipulating markets to further enrich themselves and whatever other partners that align with that goal, it might disrupt the golden goose model. Not to mention defrauding the countless investors that thought they were holding rocket ship money that was actually snake oil.
All while another country did that collectively and just said, “here, it’s free. You can even take the code and use it how you personally see fit, because if this thing really is that thing, it should be a tool anyone can access. Oh, and all you other companies, your code is garbage btw. Ours runs on a potato by comparison.”
I’m just saying, the US has already shown they will go to extreme lengths to keep its citizens from thinking too hard about how its economic model might actually be fucking them while the rich guys just move on to the next thing they’ll sell us.
ETA: a smaller scale example: the development of Wine, and subsequently Proton finally gave PC gamers a choice to move away from Windows if they wanted to.
I think this prompted investors to ask “where’s the ROI?”.
Current AI investment hype isn’t based on anything tangible. At least the amount of investment isn’t, it is absurd to think that trillion dollars that was put in the space already, even before that Softbanks deal is going to be returned. The models still hallucinate as it is inherent to the architecture, we are nowhere near replacing the workers but we got chatbots that “when they work sometimes, then they are kind of good?” and mediocre off-putting pictures. Is there any value? Sure, it’s not NFTs. But the correction might be brutal.
Interestingly enough, DeepSeek’s model is released just before Q4 earning’s call season, so we will see if it has a compounding effect with another statement from big players that they burned massive amount of compute and USD only to get milquetoast improvements and get owned by a small Chinese startup that allegedly can do all that for 5 mil.
hype isn’t based on anything tangible
So just like crypto
EDIT: The crypto bros out in full force… and right on cue proudly proclaiming they don’t understand the difference between the value of blockchain technology (which so far has not had a ton of real world value outside of mostly impractical database applications, other than furthering climate change and buying drugs) vs the SPECULATIVE value of coins since coins have no real value factors to back up their SPECULATIVE value. Stocks often have real value that back up their value, like company profits or products. Stop drinking kool aid to the point of literal zero critical thinking, jfc.
I think that the technology itself has been widely adopted and used. There are many examples in medicine, military, entertainment. But OpenAI and other hyperscalers are a bad business that burns through a loooot of cash. Same with Meta AI program. And while this has been a norm with tech darlings that they usually don’t break even for a long time, what’s unprecedented is the rate of loss and further calls for even more money even though there isn’t any clear path from what we have to AGI. All hangs on Altman and other biz-dev vague promises, threats and a “vibe” that they create.
I disagree.
Like it or hate it, crypto is here to stay.
And it’s actually one of the few technologies that, at least with some of the coins, empowers normal people.
It does empower normal people, unfortunately regulations make it harder to use. Try buying Monero, it is very hard to buy.
I disagree - before Bitcoin there was no venmo, cashapp, etc. It took weeks to move big money around. I’m not saying shit like NFT’s ever made sense, and meme coins are fucking stupid - unfortunately the crypto world has been taken over by scammers - but don’t shit on the technology
It took weeks to move big money around.
Lol this is just either a statement out of ignorance or a complete lie. Wire transfers didn’t take weeks. Checks didn’t take weeks to clear, and most people aren’t moving “big money” via fucking cash app either.
“Big money” isn’t paying half for an Uber unless you’re like 16 years old.
Since before bitcoin we’ve had Faster Payments in UK. I can transfer money directly to anyone else’s bank account and it’s effectively instant. It’s also free. Venmo and cashapp don’t serve a purpose here.
Forget bitcoin, Monero in my opinion is how crypto was supposed to be. Monero is untracable compared to bitcoin.
You fogot NSFW content, many people are making money using it. There is also AI advertising using fake models, very lucrative business.
I’m not saying that it doesn’t have any uses but the costs outpace the investments done by a mile. Current LLM and vLLMs help with efficiency to a degree but this is not sustainable and the correction is overdue.
I was making a joke, I agree with you it is over hyped. It basically just takes the training data mixes it up and gives you a result. It is not the so called life changing thing that they are advertising. It is good for writing email though.
I have a dirty suspicion that the “where’s the ROI?” talking point is actually a calculated and collaborated strategy by big wall street banks to panic retail investors to sell so they can gobble up shares at a discount - trump is going to be pumping (at minimum) hundreds of BILLIONS into these companies in the near future.
Call me a conspiracy guy, but I’ve seen this playbook many many times
I mean, I’m working on that tech and the evaluation boggles my mind. This is nowhere near worth what is put into it. It rides on empty promises that may or may not materialize (I can’t say with 100% certainty that a breakthrough happen), but current models are massively overvalued. I’ve seen that happen with ConvNets (Hinton saying we won’t need radiologists in five years in…2016, self-driving cars promised every two years, yadda yadda) but nothing to that scale.
