Thread

Oracle cites 'force majeure' to shield itself on controversial data center

155 points · 153 comments · simonpure

WokeUp420 · 1790259618 · focus · HN ↗
The number of datacenters needing to come online doesn't add up to me. It's suspicious
1. echelon · 1790260049 · focus · HN ↗
  When our spot instances go away and don't come back, that's a sign that there's not enough capacity.
  There is more demand for compute than there is supply, and that demand is going up.
  Look at all of the things that have been and are being automated and realize that we're year 6 into a hundred year journey.
  Look around you at all the things that aren't automated. They will be.
  The world you grew up in won't be here for much longer. We're going through a transformation even more dramatic than the industrial revolution. There were no airplanes and then we landed on the moon.
  Edit: downvotes as expected, but I'm shocked that a bunch of smart people at HN aren't taking the bet where this leads to a complete upending of the status quo. The holdout crowd needs to dream bigger.
  The models are solving Millennium Prize problems, finding novel biological pathways our scientists can't see, putting every single software engineer out of the job of "coding by hand", and doing the same to designers, marketers, filmmakers, and 3D artists who used to have to operate pixel by pixel / photon by photon.
  Everything is going to be AI soon.
  1. lelanthran · 1790263231 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'm shocked that a bunch of smart people at HN aren't taking the bet where this leads to a complete upending of the status quo.
    If your take on the abilities of AI is correct, we aren't talking about upending the status quo, we're talking about an ELE for the human race.
    epistasis · 1790263751 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a huge gap between what's being described in that comment and an "extinction level event" is that's what ELE means.
    What's being talked about is a massive extension of human capability, into the intellectual sphere rather than the physical environment. The atom bomb had a clear way to get to extinction, a sudden chain reaction that leads to collapse of the entire biome.
    The only way AI gets there is something like control of the nuclear weapons on all sides and that control becoming suicidal. Every other major event leads to at most civilization collapse, after which I assume we will have some sort of Butlerian Jihad restrictions on getting into the same situation.
    But, I would love to know what I'm missing here, if ELE has clearer routes!!
    lelanthran · 1790264142 · focus · HN ↗
    > The only way AI gets there is something like control of the nuclear weapons on all sides and that control becoming suicidal.
    Not the way I was thinking off; I was thinking more along the lines of brain atrophy until humans are helpless (maybe 2 complete generations of humans).
    And that's a short extinction; the KT extinction took place over thousands of years. If, 1000 years from now, we are finally at the place described in "The Machine Stops", only then will an observer be able to decide that we don't have the necessary critical mass of intelligent humans anymore.
    Humans got to be the apex predator simply on intelligence alone. It's possible that without thinking ability we'd go extinct.
    keeda · 1790273240 · focus · HN ↗
    I actually think the opposite… it takes all my skills as an engineer to steer these things effectively and I’ve learnt more than I imagined I could in a very short period of time. And I don’t even use AI as heavily these days due to other commitments. This also aligns with how heavy AI users report feeling drained after intense coding sessions.
    My take is that after a period of turmoil, most humans will be doing higher level cognitive work than we’re doing now, because all the lower level work will be done by AI agents, and so progress will accelerate multifold.

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