81 points susanthenerd 1 hour ago 51 comments
EliRivers 1 hour ago | parent
rbinv 55 minutes ago | parent
stingraycharles 1 hour ago | parent
I don’t think it’s very productive to go on a witch hunt on someone who said something stupid and is being taken out of context (albeit he should have known not to say that).
AlecSchueler 57 minutes ago | parent
Would you though? If/when the AI bubble pops and the buildout of data centres either stops or plateaus then they'd suddenly be sitting in a vastly oversaturated market and struggle to make it to the end of the year.
stingraycharles 55 minutes ago | parent
OroPla 18 minutes ago | parent
All that bubble popping will do is wipe out some investor's money. Everything else will stay and become more and more important.
But of course, it is more profitable to sell one item for $1000 than it is to sell ten items for $100 each. And even if a competitor shows up, you can just price dump with all the extra money you already made until that competitor goes away.
iagiagiag 8 minutes ago | parent
Considering the profits they've made this year, on average they still wouldn't do too bad. SK Hynix employees got almost $500k for example, I can live on that for a few years. Companies are often also legally required to compete with each other.
But they are scaling up the production, they just conveniently did it a bit late. I also fear if/when the bubble pops, they'll quickly reduce the production to ensure prices stay high. I fear Nvidia could do the same. I think it'll be hard for all of them to go back to a world where they're paid way less per component, so instead of accepting that, they can reduce the supply and keep the prices high. Only antitrust regulators could intervene to stop that.
Many people expect prices to go down after the bubble pops, but it may not happen as much as we would want to.
shoobiedoo 54 minutes ago | parent
Good god the internet is so sensitive nowadays
Moosdijk 51 minutes ago | parent
exitb 38 minutes ago | parent
Hamuko 33 minutes ago | parent
matkoniecz 23 minutes ago | parent
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50400515 for longer comment on that
And "if all current AI users" is a strawman, people using free chatgpt once or twice a day are not going to buy RAM to run own LLMs.
quikoa 53 minutes ago | parent
Ah yes Sam Altman is not a real villain despite OpenAI locking up 40% of global DRAM supply.
kreco 46 minutes ago | parent
If a customer ask me to get all my butchery stock for a year, it will make thousands of client unhappy and will make one client happy, so I'll simply refuse.
This is not how business is supposed to be, the world is not supposed to be a B2B chaos.
I know how the business is done "supply demand" bla bla. That does not make it ethical one bit.
Culonavirus 19 minutes ago | parent
If you look outside the tech bro / stock bro / tech worker circles and into the mass left wing populace everyone HATES ai and ai data centers... the Altmans, the Amodeis, the Huangs, they are not the devil himself levels just yet (cough, Musk, cough), but they are climbing up there.
People's jobs being taken (and especially entry/junior jobs, you know, the ones young people, who voted massively blue, need to get started in life), data centers increasing their electric bills or polluting the air with gigawatt level gas turbines (or both), consumer electronics prices rocketing up (~400% increases YoY in RAM and SSD prices) just so the corporate capitalist class can hoard millions of gpus in warehouses.
I mean, if the democrat politicians getting into power keep their promises and step on AI buildout's neck, it could be lights out for the AI bros.
brainwad 11 minutes ago | parent
OroPla 12 minutes ago | parent
matkoniecz 49 minutes ago | parent
1) boom and bust cycle in memory industry is a repeated problem
2) companies are not obligated to scale up
> and is being taken out of context
no it is not - Altman is lying by omission[0] by implicating that various important costs are not real
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50400515 for longer comment on that
sznio 48 minutes ago | parent
hopefully china does it and hynix burns in hell
Grimburger 18 minutes ago | parent
Obligatory: "we're curing cancer r-right?" No Nat we're making slop videos with it.
high_na_euv 14 minutes ago | parent
where is the proof?
>and are now not scaling up production according to demand.
fabs are being built by maaany companies, but it takes years
cowlevel 8 minutes ago | parent
shevy-java 2 minutes ago | parent
If the USA were a real democracy they would do something about it. After all this even violates capitalism, e. g. free market leading to reduced prices. But the USA is run by a criminal gang, pocketing away money - the TechBros and their cronies. They just make any legislation they want to, with a bit sugar coating on top to not appear too overly evil or greedy. But they are.
Den_VR 59 minutes ago | parent
7Chinguun7 54 minutes ago | parent
gambiting 43 minutes ago | parent
raincole 36 minutes ago | parent
greggsy 29 minutes ago | parent
chmod775 22 minutes ago | parent
Truly an unimaginable and ludicrous suggestion in a time where regulators are less likely than ever to pursue it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing#200...
matkoniecz 22 minutes ago | parent
Taek 29 minutes ago | parent
Let's say there are 10 companies that need 1 GB of RAM each in a life-or-death scenario. They would be willing to pay $100,000,000 per GB to get 1 GB of RAM.
At the same time, there are 90 more companies that need 1 GB of RAM each to make certain quarterly targets. They are willing to pay $10,000 per GB to get 1 GB of RAM.
If you make 9 GB of RAM, you can sell it for $900,000,000. If you make 99 GB of RAM, you can only sell it for $990,000, because the 10 life-or-death companies only need to bid high enough to push out a quarterly-target company.
It's a bit of a contrived example, but it shows you how restricting supply can boost total revenue if there is a segment of the market that has inelastic demand. (this is why medicine pricing has to be regulated - in the medical industry, there are lots of inelastic demand scenarios that can lead to predatory pricing)
matkoniecz 19 minutes ago | parent
Also, it is not likely to happen any time soon.
We have less rich gamers deciding to not upgrade their PCs at most.
IshKebab 5 minutes ago | parent
brainwad 3 minutes ago | parent
greggsy 33 minutes ago | parent
solyin 32 minutes ago | parent
serf 26 minutes ago | parent
that could've been crummy for someone; you should warn that your cute little complaint actually eats ram; half is clearly fiction but the OOM isn't.
pmlnr 11 minutes ago | parent
Do you also click on the links of the Nigerian princes?
thih9 24 minutes ago | parent
Will we go back to PCs? As in: are we going to get cheap local hackable frontier AIs at some point? I hope so.
Bengalilol 13 minutes ago | parent
pmlnr 12 minutes ago | parent
:insert Will Smith presenting meme:
The Cloud
7952 5 minutes ago | parent
shevy-java 3 minutes ago | parent
meteyor 7 minutes ago | parent