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| ▲ | Matl 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, it's better to not do anything right? After all 'the market' is working for some. No regulation would catch 100% of this, nor is it meant to. But it can definitely deal with companies opening international subsidiaries etc. Sanctions can be worked around too, but that's a hassle and so countries/companies/individuals generally try to avoid them at all costs. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > But it can definitely deal with companies opening international subsidiaries etc. You’re still imagining this as a purely single-country issue. The demand for AI data centers is global. If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them, other companies would step in to provide data center services for a fee. Now you have the same buildout, just less efficient and more expensive for the end consumers because we’re paying a new middleman for the compute. The regulation maximalists would argue that we could then forbid companies from buying foreign data center capacity, but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service. What you’re missing is that this is a global supply and demand issue and you can’t solve it with domestic regulations. | | |
| ▲ | Matl 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's solutions to everything you mention and as I said, usually when sanctions are applied to countries, companies and individuals are meant to deal exactly with this. This could range from quanta mandates on the supply side (the RAM manufacturers themselves in this case) to imposing secondary sanctions on 'other companies [that] would step in to provide data center services for a fee' If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to, the same way Chinese private companies today are generally super careful about not violating US sanctions. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to, There is currently more demand than supply in the entire world. If the US and EU got together and told DRAM companies that we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM, 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead. The data centers would be built there. Then the US and EU would be compute-starved and have no choice but to go to these other countries for compute. I suggest you read up on the history of attempts to control prices of oil throughout history. Oil is an order of magnitude bigger market than DRAM. If you think it's realistic to suggest that the EU and US could sanction entire countries into keeping some chip prices down so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop, this isn't a conversation grounded in reality. | | |
| ▲ | Matl 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead These 10 countries need the US/EU market for their exports. But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less! > we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM That's not what the proposal was. The proposal was to limit the ability of AI goons to completely buy the DRAM market out so that everyone else is forced to pay substantially more. If the problem is that it feeds into general inflation then it is suddenly not merely 'so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop'. It's like oil, it feeds into everything; manufacturing, delivery of goods to your local supermarket, flights etc. etc. you can't simply say 'hey I don't drive a car so high oil prices don't affect me'. If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down. I'd argue that's incentive enough. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less! The DRAM companies would be building more if they could. You can't sanction your way into squeezing blood from a stone. > If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down. If a country came along and declared that companies couldn't buy the resources they need from other companies, the second order effect would be every major company relocating their headquarters out of that country as soon as possible, along with a sharp decrease in startups being formed in that country. The economic impacts of this level of command-and-control government would be devastating to the economy. Much more than having to spend a few hundred dollars more on a laptop every 5-10 years. | | |
| ▲ | Matl 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The DRAM companies would be building more if they could. You keep arguing as if there's only one side to this, the producers/DRAM companies who can't scale production fast enough. But there's two sides to a market, the producers (DRAM makers) and the consumers, (AI industry). I am arguing for increasing the supply by taking some away from the AI industry. This is BECAUSE on the production side there's no way to address this fast enough. | | |
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| ▲ | klibertp 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service. That might actually be the goal. A more fragmented market would mean each participant has less money, so they would try to watch their costs a bit more closely. The innovation rate (in non-cost-cutting areas) would probably decrease, maybe even substantially... which some people happen to consistently advocate for. A lot of lost efficiency would be reclaimed in a few years, but the whole system would be more stable, cheaper, and less centralized as a side effect. Yeah, it would be suicidal to do that when it's your budget that gets the taxes from those giant corporations; who would want to willingly reduce their income for years? The rest of the world would benefit tremendously, but it could be a net plus (socially, politically, if not purely economically) in 5-7 years down the road - even in the country currently benefiting from the corporations the most. But that would be one to two lost elections too late, even if it turned true. So, while it won't happen, if it did, I don't believe we'd be worse for it. | |
| ▲ | FridgeSeal 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The demand for AI data centers is global Not saying there isn’t demand, but it’s definitely artificially inflated by VC-fomo and circular-funding ~~fraud~~ shenanigans. > If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them One of these companies is responsible for buying up DRAM wafers, in what still appears to be an attempt to deny them to everyone else, and another one of these companies seemingly exists to launder money for a fascist billionaire. | | |
| ▲ | jrflowers 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | >another one of these companies seemingly exists to launder money for a fascist billionaire. Fascist trillionaire |
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| ▲ | ChadNauseam 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes it is far better to do nothing than to something that makes the situation worse | |
| ▲ | 15155 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Yes, it's better to not do anything right? Ah yes, "We have to do something! Something must be better than nothing!" Famous last words before freedoms of all varieties are eroded. | | |
| ▲ | Matl 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I applaud you for standing for Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI's freedom to price everyone else out of the market, because noone else will. | | |
| ▲ | 15155 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Here's an exercise: try drafting the statute. Then, let's see how quickly I can reinterpret whatever power you've grabbed in the name of "doing something" and pervert it for some other nefarious purpose, or just generally bypass the intent entirely as a motivated actor with limitless funds. Many regulations, once passed, impact only those incapable of navigating around them - typically, the less-fortunate. Invariably, power taken in the name of some transient issue is never later relinquished. |
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| ▲ | Teever 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The question is always: What specific regulation? You're absolutely right that we can't solve this by regulating DRAM prices.
How we got to a situation where a handful of companies can spike the price of consumer electronics several times what it was only a few years ago and these same companies have become the centralized source for information is a journey decades in the making at this point. Decades of insufficient regulations, insufficient enforcement of existing regulations and the lack of any organized efforts to change it. Microsoft should have been broken up in 2001. The American government should have taken that threat seriously. Governments around the world should have. The dependence of all levels of governments on one single American company for their desktop operating systems and productivity software as well as the spying opportunities that gave American companies and intelligence entities was a grave threat and regulated better to avoid entrenched foreign monopolies. But they didn't. 25 years later and Microsoft still dominates the home OS market and office environment, they have a sizable portion of the cloud, they recently took a huge chunk of the game industry and now the AI industry with their investment in OpenAI. Even though there's a direct line between a historical lack of regulation on a monopoly like Microsoft and the rise of OpenAI leading to the spike in ram prices it isn't just about Microsoft. You can paint similar pictures about Google, Oracle, Facebook, or Amazon. But to me it isn't just about these companies and regulations/actions directed specifically them but the broader misregulations that have stifled market health and dysfunction that has allowed these criminal organizations to have so much influence. There could have been real enforcement with criminal penalties and fines that exceed the profits and costs associated with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.[0] Not doing so has just allowed wealth to continue to accumulate in the hands of criminal people, who not surprisingly continue to do shitty things in their quest for profit. Why were there no personal consequences to Eric Schmidt[1] for these actions, let alone consequences that would have prevented him from attaining the position of influence that he currently has? The notion of the right to repair should have superseded the DMCA and laws should have been adopted to punish noteworthy companies that lobbied for it and profited from it. There should be more of a focus on governmental standards mandated open interoperability to prevent walled garden business models. This would have kneecapped wealth accumulation among a few corruption groups and allowed a richer more competitive market to flourish. DMCA and copyright extension, WIPO harmonizing of trade law should all have been swept away. Where's the fallout from Snowden? Were there any massive institutional reforms there? Any jail time for people in government and industry who were involved? How did the lack of regulations and and lasting reform around that debacle shape American society at large and the tech industry? Everything that we're experiencing today is the result of decades of choices to not regulate the tech industry in any way that resembles other industries. It is a global collective choice to cede power to private individuals based out of the west coast of the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... | |
| ▲ | burnte 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > > That's why some regulation is not the enemy of the people that some want to make it out to be.
> The question is always: What specific regulation?
> Regulation is not the magic silver bullet that some want to make it out to be. The fact that you ask the important question and then continue to kneejerk at the mention of "regulations" shows the REAL problem. People have problems DISCUSSING the idea. Everyone in the world knows that regulations can be stupid, but that's not the sole property of government, businesses can be colossally stupid too. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > People have problems DISCUSSING the idea. My comment was discussing the idea. If you have ideas to discuss, let’s discuss those too. What I have a problem with is the demand that we accept that regulation will fix everything, but every discussion about the actual effects of regulation gets dismissed. When an idea only looks good if you can prevent people from discussing the details, it’s probably not a good idea. | |
| ▲ | 15155 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > businesses can be colossally stupid too Businesses don't generally have the ability to take freedoms, power, etc. and then never relinquish control - their stupidity (in theory) has limited impact on everyone else. |
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| ▲ | Matl 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > What’s the proposed regulation that would help here? Price controls? They don’t work. The proposed regulation would be that if a single company/industry buying up supply to the point it starts driving significant inflation for such and such goods, they would be severely restricted from doing so going forward. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s a global phenomenon. The latency concerns for data centers are minimal, so they could be built anywhere. If your country restricted a company from buying too much of a product they need, 10 other competitor companies in other countries would be formed the very next day offering to do the work in their country for a minimal fee. This is a global market. Supply and demand isn’t going to be cancelled out by politicians in one country trying to squeeze the market. If you did restrict companies from buying things they need, you would see all future companies in that space incorporated in other countries. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, imagine doing that for oil. American and EU companies that “hoard” oil get punished. The net effect would be everyone else gets to buy more and prices remain exactly the same. | |
| ▲ | testing22321 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The old race to the bottom. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s the old supply and demand in a global market. It’s weird to read all of the calls for regulation to fix this when the DRAM and chip production is happening in other countries. |
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| ▲ | m4rtink 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not saying this is the solution, but strategic reserves of important commodities exist. Maybe we need the same now for computer parts, that are now so important for everything in our modern digital society ? So that feverish investor speculation and shady circular financing deals don't cause sudden 30+% inflation on any technological device. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Good news, you get the DDR2 that has been languishing in a salt cave for the last 20 years. Reality check: a strategic reserve of modern technology components in volumes needed to impact consumer prices is completely infeasible and illogical. I’d be fine with the idea of the government maintaining supplies of defense industrial inputs, critical minerals, etc; but as we see with our efforts for rare earths (and even petroleum) you can never stockpile consumer supply levels. | |
| ▲ | sib 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A strategic reserve of a commodity that (historically) depreciates at ~50% per year is a terrible trade for occasionally avoiding demand-driven price spikes. |
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| ▲ | win311fwg 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So, in practice, if, say, the agriculture industry buys up the supply of seeds (they already effectively do) and we see it start driving significant inflation for food (a common concern), the agriculture industry would be restricted from buying seeds? | | |
| ▲ | Matl 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, because we can't apply specific regulation for specific industries where it makes sense, we have to write them as if we were LLMs so they can be proven to 'not work'. | | |
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| ▲ | Danox 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The market will take care of itself. The Chinese are going use this to ramp up and build more memory, and some companies out there will take it in-house, In short, they won’t be caught with their pants down again. | |
| ▲ | mghackerlady 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The only thing the US could feasibly implement is forcing micron to allocate a certain amount of its production for consumer use | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why? Why is consumer use vs corporate use a higher and better priority meriting such an intrusive regulation? | | |
| ▲ | angoragoats 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because extreme corporate use, that is, what is happening now where a majority of supply is locked up ahead of time via B2B back-room deals, is anti-consumer. Unregulated, it is easy to see how this could lead to a perpetual "rent everything" dystopian environment for consumers. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Every use of DRAM is a corporate use, with the best consumer-friendly examples like Apple’s efforts to hold down prices (until today) being thanks to “back room deals”. Nobody’s buying some DRAM to build a memory stick in their garage. Apple, Raspberry Pi, Supermicro, and OpenAI all have the same claim to supply you do: you can buy it with money, with the seller being allowed to charge what they want. In fact, high prices are going to be the only way to stimulate supply and encourage the billion dollar investment in additional memory fabs. Price controls or other supply-killing mechanisms are known not to work - it’s Econ 101. | | |
| ▲ | angoragoats 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You ignored the part where I mentioned "extreme" and "locked up." To be fair I wasn't necessarily clear what those meant. I'm specifically referring to the deal(s) that OpenAI signed which reserved an outsized chunk of the memory supply, for what is apparently speculative future hardware that hasn't been built yet, or at least to build hardware that no consumer or business will ever be able to physically purchase. Hopefully you'll agree that there's a difference between even a large buyer like Apple reserving a large chunk of DRAM supply to put in their products that they sell to consumers, and the anti-competitive behavior by OpenAI that I describe above. |
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| ▲ | angoragoats 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Barring any single company from negotiating to buy more than a certain percentage of a given existing market of goods would be a start. Companies would still be free to build their own factories/fabs if they didn't like it. That, and putting Sam Altman in jail for being a lying fraudster. | | |
| ▲ | Danox 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | One or two companies will come out of this, designing and engineering memory and partnering with someone else to do the fab of that memory no different than making processor chips in Arizona. |
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