The memory companies report that they're sold out through 2027... so it might be a while

I for one can't wait. Current prices are absolutely insane.

However a problem exists with scalper bots. They're going to fight tooth and nail to keep prices artificially high even when supply increases. Same with the hyperscalers blowing "free money" at eating supply as a strategic position against smaller competitors.

I built a new PC about two years ago, and I probably got it at the last possible opportunity for a while. CPU and motherboard have come down by maybe £100 in between the two of them, but a 7900 xtx (or any other 24GB GPU) for under £1,000 now seems like a bargain, and £180 for 64GB of DDR5 makes me feel like an old man talking about the halcyon days.

Welcome to the club. If you're _really_ competitive in cs2, I'd swap out to a 9800x3d setup, but it's still a maybe. Very little reason to upgrade right now other than to run LLMs.

If there's a decrease in AI ram demand, it will not be because the models get better. Models getting better will increase RAM demand, because it grows the part of the economy that models are useful for. Classic Jevon's Paradox.

Cycles tend to be 5-10 years long not 25. Without knowing anything else I would expect a fab you seriously start planning today will be at full capacity in about 5 years. Nobody serious likes delays - in particular the banks don't like loaning money that won't at least start paying off. They know it takes some time to design a building - but factories typically are standard buildings so once you know about the size you can get it done fast - I expect 1 year to have the building done is the worst case (and it can be done in 3 months possibly if your project management is good - after interest this is cheaper than the 1 year). It takes time to build and install the specialized machines that go inside - this is the largest problem, but you typically order them first and then plan the building around the needed space and when they will arrive. Then you need 6 months to setup the inside of the building. From there it is just ramp up time.

The above is a standard project management problem. We do this for lots of industry all the time. There is every reason to think you can get a new factory running in 5 years.

Note that I said 1 factory above. Some of the special machines we don't have the ability to make them fast enough to do 2 (I don't know the real number!) new factories in 5 years. Existing factories are using most of the special machine capacity to replace machines that wore out on the way - this can be corrected as well, but it adds another year and the expenses are much larger. Realistically though 1 new factory is likely enough.

Sounds like you are telling us it’s a new paradigm?

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportat...

Sure, yes, compared to the prices of storage 35 years ago, it's a bargain.

Compared to the prices of storage today, when people are presumably buying the product, it's actually a bad price.

But software also fit in 640kB instead of 640GB.

What does that have to do with the Turing Test? The TT has clear rules: There are judges that have a dialogue with anonymized AI/humans. The humans cannot cheat and impersonate a machine, they have to act normally. The AI obviously should try to sound human.

No AI would pass this test with experienced judges.

I think of this and the book the author wrote Computer Power and Human Reason every time I try to talk to product about the short comings of LLMs

It was always a bad test, despite the greatness of Turing. The human organism is built to 'project' humanity onto anything available; apart from this none of the peculiar phenomena of the so-called 'modern human' is even intelligible, even the possibility of science. I bring all that is in me onto you as soon as you seem to be saying something, and reciprocally. We do this at the drop of a hat, and all specifically human life depends on it. But this power shows its 'gullibility' with 'gods' as also with Eliza. I am not snide about it because it is overreach by something the significance of which is overwhelming , but one is indeed amazed by the failure to reflect on the part of the ones eg giving LLMs rights - to take extreme case of a very widespread cultus - as if /they/ were the rational party, not ancients placating the storm god.

Yeah...but in context, "gullible" seem a bit pejorative. Humans are also hopelessly incapable of sensing radioactivity, methanol in their alcoholic drinks, carbon monoxide, and a great many other things that our ancestors just didn't encounter much.

Though we're pretty good at sizing up a person's emotional balance/maturity and competence at familiar tasks. So maybe have an old blacksmith watch the AI/robot interact with horse owners for a while, then shoe their horses, and see how well it does.

Also the endless online debates of ‘is this post made by ai? What about those images, that video or that music?’.

Nowadays, I prefer AI CS agents to humans. I just had a chat with an AI yesterday, it understood me perfectly even when I made mistakes, I was impressed.

In contrast, humans tend to paste me the same barely-relevant macro over and over, no matter how much time I spend explaining my issue.

Customer service is very different. Crappiest audio quality possible & scripted answers all the way down. Almost like humans are forced to behave like machines.

April last year

Yes, which is exactly and entirely the point of the whole paper. Somehow missed still -- despite how important AI has become, shockingly few people actually read the short, layperson-accessible paper that started the whole field.

I kinda have to link it now, so uhh here's a random PDF: https://www.hec.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Computing%...

we might need to bring back the Voight-Kampff test. anthropic at the very least is introducing a water making system to Claude which might make them more identifiable to humans as well as much easier to detect for machines.

“advanced LLMs like GPT-4”

On that note, I'd like to share Fix the News: https://substack.fixthenews.com/

It's a Substack that reports good things happening around the world, divided into sections like "Conservation and Restoration," "Climate and Energy," "Medicine," etc. And they also give part of their profits directly to projects in those categories.

(I'm not affiliated with them, I'm just a subscriber.)

Thanks for sharing this sentiment and including data. So few people seem aware of the wonderful progress humanity keeps making. Makes me worry that the progress will stall or even reverse because people don't even know it's happening.

Is that AI / compute driven?

These improvements are showing that we're producing plenty so that the cost is driven down and distributed to wider and wider portions of humanity.

But my personal observations of AI is that it's producing more and more of the same stuff and not moving the front forward much. The human innovation and invention seems to be lost.

I wonder if doubling the workforce had anything to do with that..

In real terms, the median human globally today is vastly richer than at any point during the twentieth century.

And the median American is also richer in real terms, both in terms of wealth and in terms of income.

Of course, that all assumes that you use a reasonable measure of inflation that’s stable, well-designed, and applied methodically and consistently over many decades.

Alternatively, you can cherry pick data points and go based on vibes, which lets claim whatever you want!

What is exciting about getting pablum spoonfed by a data center owned by trillionaires?

I'd rather go to the library and read a book.

False dichotomies make for terrible conversation.

"Find your path forward!" he shouted with glee, as he ran toward the cliff.