What a waste of power. Somehow they went from “we’re green tech!” to “fuck it, we need ALL the power” real quick. And for nothing.
For profit… somehow.
They are making money off AI. Don’t think they’re not. I don’t understand how, but these company’s are getting profit.
Not necessarily. Companies chase what’s popular because it boosts the stock. Executives get bonuses and move to the next hot idea.
Remember when everything was block chain?
No, I mean they are literally making money from it. Asianometry touched on it, but didn’t explain how they were making the profit.
They’re racking in a ton of investment case on AI. I’m sure there’s also a slew of government contracts that keep this beast afloat.
But in terms of real value added to the economy? This seems like its just another Wall Street bubble waiting to pop.
Oh I agree. But the fact is these company’s are seeing actual profits right now.
They’re seeing a flood of new investment, but they’re also absorbing huge losses from within their AI divisions.
The profits they’re reaping are in other sectors.
Are they? The Subprime AI Crisis
Don’t forget that Microsoft isn’t some dumb company trying to jump on the AI bandwagon. They’re a cloud provider and Azure provides lots of AI options.
Microsoft is one of the platforms raking in heaps of money from dumb companies trying to jump on the AI bandwagon. They’re the equivalent of the people selling MAGA shirts outside trump rallies.
Microsoft is one of the platforms raking in heaps of money from dumb companies trying to jump on the AI bandwagon.
True. But one of their biggest customers is OpenAI. A big part of Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI comes in the form of free access to its data centers (which cost money to run, thus costing Microsoft in the short term). By taking advantage of OpenAI’s non-profit status, Microsoft was able to write off a bunch of those losses early on as tax deductions.
But they’re still losses.
Other firms using Microsoft to jump on the AI bandwagon might help make up the difference. But that’s like saying “I’m only doing some of my own heroin, so I still come out ahead”. Given the current rate of return on AI investments, the only truly correct investment value is $0.
I can’t wait for this AI bubble to pop.
I’m not saying that some parts of AI have utility - machine learning for medical scans will be a great thing for instance, but the “oooh new! shiny! venture capitalist, line-must-go-up” side of things can well and truly fuck off.
I don’t think it will pop.
Everyone is trying to get in on the ground floor for actual AI. True AI will be as revolutionary as electricity and online porn.
Can you explain what you mean? True AI? Like AGI or something else?
aaeven just a machine learning model capable of searching for information and accurately returning an answer with a list of references supporting the claims would be huge for many industries and individuals.
it could help replace customer service with a competent replacement (if the company actually spent the effort to provide necessary features to the customer ui), search through software documentation to help programmers, and hopefully be a better version of what google was.
LLMs are kinda, sorta there already, aren’t they?
We are a long way off from true AI. You know how VR was a thing with the virtual boy and then the whole thing died for awhile until the oculus and vive revived the idea like 20 years later? And how VR is basically dead again because it’s still not quite there? AI is basically like that. We’ll get there eventually, but this current trend isn’t going to be enough to get us to true AI. It’ll go quiet again for awhile until there’s some new approach that revives the hype again. Maybe the next phase will do it, but the current AI approach is a dead end from a true AI perspective.
You aren’t wrong; but unlike VR, “dumb” AI has been added to so many devices, used so prolifically, and been invested in so much that it will hold until real AI exists.
AI has already written more on the internet than humans have. There is no reason to believe it is a niche product like VR.
AI has already written more on the internet than humans have. There is no reason to believe it is a niche product like VR.
The internet. Where it gets all it’s training material?
This is not the brag you think it is.
I don’t think it’s a brag. It’s likely more a simple statement of Truth, or at least “near” truth Since the great majority of the internet is not available on a search engine and therefore is unlikely to have been found by an AI
Exactly. I’m bullish on AI, I’m not bullish on what the mass market media calls “AI.”
Why can corporations own nuclear plants? Aren’t they people? Can I own a nuclear plant? Or am I just stuck building additional pylons?
Most nuclear plants are owned by corporations. Before the accident, Three Mile Island was owned and operated by Constellation Energy (now Constellation Nuclear) and EnergySolutions.
Would be incredibly ironic if that thing melted down again and took MS’s datacenters with it.
It was only a partial meltdown, some cooling systems failed and it was successfully contained! Safety precautions designed to stop a full meltdown and release of radiation succeeded.
I know that’s not really the point of your comment but I feel like this particular incident has a lot of misinfo and I wanted to help elucidate what happened.
Nuclear meltdowns are incredibly uncommon though.
So Microsoft will also be repsonible for taking care of the nuclear waste until it’s not toxic anymore, right? Right??
I mean… yeah this clearly sucks ass, but as a silver lining, maybe it’ll rebuild interest in nuclear.
This is exactly what I’ve been advocating for. Nuclear power, especially if they lift the restrictions on fuel recycling, is the cleanest option we have besides solar and wind, and it’s a technology that is fully developed and available now. Nuclear power is heavily regulated and is very safe these days, and is not reliant on rare earth metals like many solar panels still are.
You’ve been advocating for pointlessly wasting the output of an entire nuclear power plant during a time when an urgent decarbonization of energy is needed, to fuel the energy needs of a corporate monopoly running server farms providing a technology that’s neither wanted or needed outside of niche use cases, following an online hype mixed with scams and rugpull startups that rival crypto’s heydey?
AI whatever but nuclear yes pls
There’s a difference between properly funded nuclear power under lab conditions and capitalistically bled-dry, money-before-safety , decrepit cash-grab reactor junkyards that end in leaving miles upon miles of land unusable for generations though.
a yes, it’s going to be so fun when enshittification hits the power plant and it start leaking radioactive water in the lake
Edit: my issue is with tech companies owning power plants, be it nuclear, oil or gas, enshittification cold fuck all of them and cause catastrophic damage, other than that nuclear power is based
Safest power source per kWh. This is some boomer-ass scare mongering.
Is the problem nuclear? Or the problem the fact that Microsoft AI bullshit needs a full ass nuclear power plant to run it?
Read the comment I replied to.
No, sorry, those were rhetorical questions. I apologize, you’re 100% correct.
Ahh gochya.
I mean, I get why people scoff at it. But look at it from their perspective.
They’re getting heat for all the energy LLMs use. The natural response is to buy carbon free energy and good on them for taking that step, frankly.
