Comment by cavemandaveman
7 hours ago
A "monopoly" grab from a conspiracy spanning all of the major tech firms? You really think that's the most likely explanation? Not just that the firms are competing in AI and all realize they need massive compute?
Prices are up a bit but there are plenty of "free-programmable computers" from a dozen or more manufacturers on the market. That's not going away.
The word conspiracy is misused there. That is not what a conspiracy is. This would be all those companies acting in their own best interest, separate from each other. The word for that isn't conspiracy but collusion, and it doesn't even require those companies to actually cooperate with one another as implied by the word conspiracy. They would all be acting in their common interest, with no or limited agreements between them.
I don't think you have your definitions straight since collusion does mean conspiring to work together. Your original post pointed towards AI just being cover for a plan to create monopoly power amongst the tech firms. I don't see how you can make that argument with a straight face. Apple, HP, Dell, Asus, etc are just going to stop selling computers?
I take your point that AI is pushing up the price of computers, at least temporarily, but you're leaning way into conspiracy and cynicism in your original post.
> ... AI is pushing up the price of computers ...
"AI" is really 2 companies, by extension funded/owned mostly by FANG, and is not pushing up the price of computers, it's buying ALL DDR5 capacity, processors, memory, and of course GPUs, including the fab capacity to build them in the first place. I don't know if you've recently tried to convince your boss recently to buy a new machine, but ...