Comment by jmyeet

I agree but it's even worse than that.

Data centers come down to performance-per-Watt. Electricity accounts for 20-30% of a data center's operating cost [1]. I don't know the exact breakdown but the GPU part of that is probably the majority given how power hungry GPUs are. The B200 is upwards of 1200 Watts [2]. The B200 is rated at ~4.5PFLOPS of dense FP8. So you're getting 3.75PFLOPS/W. We don't know what the next generation will look like. The A200 (Hopper architecture card that preceded the B200) had ~4PFLOPS apparently but also lower power consumption. Obviously this changes depending on whether you're looking at dense or spare and FP8 vs INT8 vs INT4 vs FP4, etc so we're just using FP8 as a yardstick.

Imagine a fictional B200 successor, the T200 that has 8PFLOPS of dense FP8 at 1000 Watts. Well then a DC built on that where the T200 will likely cost similar to what the B200 does now, you'll get nearly double PPW so the same size DC and same electricity load is going to be like 2 of your old DCs in operating costs. That's a big deal when you've laid out a trillion dollars.

[1]: https://iaeimagazine.org/electrical-fundamentals/how-much-el...

[2]: https://www.trgdatacenters.com/resource/h200-power-consumpti...

I thought my post was pretty free of hype. I said that this new revenue "Maybe even enough to start covering their costs!"

At a certain point, I genuinely feel like the best way this hype is being sold is by making people genuinely believe in it.

and in that sense, if Anthropic and OpenAI are able to create the projection that they can-be profitable despite finances seeming bubbly at best, I think that what happens is that these companies spew so much amount of content that people like Simon get into it too.

There is a deeper problem of people falling into AI psychosis too, in general, I am not sure if Simon has fallen into it or not

I think that the greatest point which can be made here is to not offload your thinking to others and to think about the situation yourself. Sounds familiar (looks like we are all off-loading our thinking itself to machines)

Side-note: As humans, we have a tendency to quickly judge or make quick decisions which stems from our times foraging and scavenging in jungles.

Another Side-note: at a certain point, I am unsure of how much to think about AI or not, certainly discussions about it that were happening 2 years ago weren't helpful in contexts that they are used now (well not in any way or form that a person discussing and getting into the weeds of AI 2 years ago is better than a person just getting into it say 2-3 months ago)

With the industry (moving so fast) [but that doesn't mean that you can't catch up with it, I feel like the fast word has made people think that they are falling behind which is imo wrong i suppose]*, It is basically unsure to me of any FOMO or anything if you aren't using AI already, I find this notion naive.

People might be making strong opinions (AI psychosis) and skills on the tools available at the moment the same done 2 years ago. We don't quite know about the tech as these are still black-boxes and how they progress and what these "AI skills" might survive or not in future. Heck, we aren't even sure if these tools might survive or not or wouldn't be made magnitudes more expensive simply to break even as they are given to us for the first time at percentages of the price.

I don't know if I should form (strong) opinions yet and also a question of its worth so much thinking efforts in the first place, probably just gonna do my own thing (the way I want to) which includes learning C at the moment. because learning is fun.