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JohnMcD.'s avatar

Great work Ben. Skating on ice off unknown thickness over water of unknown depth and there-be-monsters.

Meanwhile

https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/10/ai_slop_bug_reports/

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Tim's avatar

Thank you for all your energy this year Ben! Interestingly, I've been thinking myself about those parallels between railway and internet infrastructure builds recently, and their value post-bubble; and wondering whether an AI bubble pop could offer us a similar silver lining. It led me to wonder what 'tracks' we were actually laying down here, and your newsletter intersects with a number of them... For example, even ignoring the "neocloud" risks, I wondered how a typical investor - someone whose ideology is essentially a belief in "growing the size of the overall economic pie" (vs., for example, redistributing it) - can justify a (conservatively-priced) US$30,000 H100 with the equivalent energy-use of a US citizen and a useful working lifespan of 1-3 years, compared to, say, a life-changing US$30,000 'investment' (education, social support, business loans etc) in a human with a working lifespan of 40-60 years? We might start to see more shape to this in 2025, but I'm still struggling to find optimism among the foundations that the ceaseless cycles of 'more compute' will leave us with, if this bubble does burst... Anyway, 2025 will undoubtably be interesting either way! Have an excellent Christmas and New Year, and thanks again.

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