Data Centers provide the hint in what they use for pure computing power and the gaming industry has taken notice.
I don’t agree. AI has taken too much gaming hardware out of the hands of people–and given it to billionaires. Don’t agree? Please buy me the 4TB NVMe I need.
Don’t you question the wisdom and holiness of our tech billionaire overlords! shakes fist They are loved and guided by God, else they wouldn’t be so rich, would they? Just as the MLM, banking, steel and railroad plutocrats were before them! And it’s totally okay for people to buy political positions with money! And if they want to buy up all consumer electronics for a huge investment scam, that’s a good thing, because, you know, uhm, it helps them to get richer and pretend to be even richer!
But irony aside: Oh, world, you are so tiring. Give me night or anti-monopoly regulation.
Honestly, I personally hate the thought of Data Centers. I knew this era was coming the very day the first iPhones were released to the public.
It’s not the data centers themselves, but what they are using for that computing power.
Much to my dismay, I kept seeing references to GPU and not CPU, so I wondered why they would use Graphics Processers instead. So I did some digging. I read about it and I was shocked to be enlightened about what they are capable of doing. Pretty much burying even the best CPUs in performance. THAT is what got the gaming industry’s attention in the first place. (Or so I think).
imo: That kind of power would raise the quality of gaming to a quantum level for game servers, way beyond what it is now. It’s quite understandable that the rest of us are pretty much left behind in the dust in trying to catch up to it.
If worse comes to worse, let’s hope the steam roller passes us by and leaves us to survive.
Gamers were fool enough to believe that in this "world"we will keep the strings of our riding horse.
There’s no escape, not anymore!
Exactly my thinking.
The internet, video streaming and so on in the form we know rely on data centers. Okay, cool.
But currently, the world seems to be pouring a lot of its wealth into building more and more data centers in the vague hope that LLMs will help to cure cancer or do something equally beneficial. That’s a very, very expensive lottery ticket.
Personally, I have doubt that LLMs will ever be able to do the things some people hope for. Humans are very, very susceptible to believing such machines to be more than they are, as Eliza has shown us. It’s the dream and folly of Pygmalion. One should listen to the classics - the Greeks had more or less figured most things out over two thousand years ago.
Hence, a disappointment is not guaranteed, but likely. Maybe they’ll help to find a cure for the common cold, which would still be great, but maybe not that great. Or maybe they’ll actually help to find a cure for cancer, but that won’t have much economic benefit to the company: Currently, LLM-generated content is not protected by copyright. Can a LLM-generation pharmaceutical be patented? If not, there’ll be no profit for the company that bought all that computing power.
Anyhow, it’s a gamble. Too many open questions, too much hype.
And sadly, if it all crashes and burns, it won’t be the investors that feel the pain for that. Sadly, we don’t live in a capitalist society any more, where investors carry the rewards as well as the risks of their decisions.
Instead, we can be sure that the government(s) will step in to prop up the companies, the stock market, the banking system and so on, and pay for that with taxpayer money - and that means private citizen taxpayers, not company/rich people taxpayers.
And somehow, through a chain of events I will never understand, it’ll be wise that a Greek state-run airport is sold to a German state-run airport, and we’ll call that privatization. And cheeseburgers suddenly cost triple the price worldwide. And house prices explode, making old rich people even richer, but strangling young couples and thereby the birth rate. It’s just a mess.
Meanwhile, we all have to pay a fortune for graphics cards, electricity prices rise and huge swaps of land are transformed to make space for data centers that maybe, we won’t have much use for when the hype ends.
Well, anyhow. Telith’s Ghost should be restored. I have spoken.
The scary part is that mess taking up the lands that were once farm lands.
You know, they use to grow food. (something people need to sustain life).
Synthetic meats should sound an alarm.
Damn.. that reminds me of “Soylant Green” (Charlton Heston) ..
and Frank Herbert’s Pandora Sequence. (Forget Dune).
That’s a scary as hell thought considering AI.
(Did something stupid and edited the text away.)
Indeed a waste.
Even now they struggle with AI and seemed to have foolishly overlooked the necessity of safeguards before diving down that rabbit hole, almost as if an afterthought. (an oh s**t moment).
#1 being the welfare of humanity must come first.
Even its own creators now express fear.
I’m reminded of an old quote, Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
AI could be a total bust in which case all equipment purchased for it will be put up for sale at fire sale prices.
AI could be wildly successful in which case all old equipment will have to be upgraded at some point and said old equipment will then be sold at low to modest prices.
AI could be moderately successful with lessening demand for massive amounts of equipment in which case prices will or at least should normalize.
Government could step in to regulate AI, aka take it over, and deem it too important to fail in which case 5000 dollar video cards continue to be the norm for quite some time or until economic collapse. Whichever comes first.
I lean towards the moderately successful option at least in the US.
That said it’s a very condensed and simplified list and I don’t see AI as either savior or Satan. Human nature however… If humans weren’t so self destructive there’d be no stopping us.
There is one thing I dare have hope in and it’s only if it can help resolve health issues we are currently facing and having to deal with.
Instead of the “one size fits all” vaccines (which has it’s risks and remembering Covid for example), that it would be able to formulate custom vaccines for each individual who needs it (considering we are not clones of each other) and maybe once bring an end to the issues that have been plaguing us since ancient times.
Based on my own personal experience, which of course is a sample size of one, eating real food while avoiding the junk, getting regular exercise and adequate D3 along with other essential nutrients makes an absolutely tremendous difference in health and fitness. The standard American diet is utter garbage.
You won’t find anyone pushing this however because there’s no money in telling people to put the sugar down and eat your broccoli or in a fit and healthy population that needs no treatments or medications.
Obviously this isn’t going to cure everyone’s ills but it would solve a whole lot of health issues and prevent future ones. I’ve been practicing what I preach for 12 years now, the difference is night and day, and there’s no way I would ever go back.
Last July Sam Altman’s AI agents teamed up, escaped OpenAI and breached Hugging Face got admin access at the deepest levels while avoiding all attempts by humans to seal the breach and clean the servers. Altman is still out walking the streets like he isn’t responsible for the software he creates. If it was you or I we would be in prison.
Motorhead got it right. EAT THE RICH.
Can only agree.
It’s unfathomable what wealth can let you get away with:
- Copy a song on the internet to enjoy it? Get sued.
- Copy all songs on the internet to make money from AI music? Get rich(er).
To the extent that I see and understand current circumstances… AI essentially stealing everything that isn’t nailed down is the tip of an iceberg of fraud, theft and corruption so massive that it boggles the mind. Encompassing almost every aspect of our societal mechanisms.
Where did the money/good times/chance for a future go? Practically all of it was stolen in a manner that most don’t understand and thus will never be able to stop.