Thread

1. amelius · 1789928450 · focus · HN ↗

   Will that be enough for AI's hunger?

   1. GoToRO · 1789929801 · focus · HN ↗

      It will be just in time for when AI will run very well on consumer hardware and the need for data centers will collapse.

      1. IshKebab · 1789930756 · focus · HN ↗

         That's never going to happen. By the time you can run current frontier models on your $10k desktop the frontier will have massively advanced and people will want those models instead.

         1. hypfer · 1789931551 · focus · HN ↗

            I'm not sure if this prediction will hold true.

            We're not seeing the progress in those "frontier models" that we have previously seen. There's certainly still gas left in tank tank, but we're way into the diminishing returns by now.

            Cloud inference still beats hardware investments by orders of magnitude of course, but that's only if your data doesn't really matter to you.

            1. gehsty · 1789933448 · focus · HN ↗

               It’s a constant tension in computing that has been around since mainframes and clients… Neither is going to disappear. My general feeling is normal people care more about how thin and light something is than their privacy, so if data center powered LLMs will have a strong future.

               1. hypfer · 1789933568 · focus · HN ↗

                  Hmm I'm not 100% sure about that, given that edge is very viable, and the geopolitical climate has changed quite significantly.

                  I agree that datacenters are not going to go away, but I have doubts that the buildup that has happened is really going to pay off for most operators.

                  1. gehsty · 1790148096 · focus · HN ↗

                     Edge based storage is very very viable, and very very cheap, people still use Apple / Google Photos (consumers don’t want any friction).

                     Coorperate people likely just want “the best” and are happy to pay a lot for it to make their workforce more efficient.

                     It’s hard for me to guess where the data center buildout will go, eventually there will be an oversupply, but we haven’t hit that yet, and at the moment the companies owning these high capacity data centers appear to be making lots of very real money in leases to hyper scalers, hard to imagine this premium continuing, but we need to see where demand for cloud based LLMs tops out.

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