Sam Alman is a CROOK, part deux (now broadcasting in the correct subforum)

[AIkonoklazt]

First part here:

 

Now for the second part, since it's allegedly "non-interesting."

I do find it "interesting" how Sam is going to a foundry now, complete with a Government wig who's tagging along:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/ifs-direct-connect.html

Now think about this for half a minute. He's not even building anything ground up- There's been zero indications of that. Every indication he's given so far points to "ready made" sources (see above post), either buying hardware outright (the GPU kits he tweeted about) or going to a foundry to procure silicon.

It would be doubly puzzling/"interesting" why that he's asking $7 TRILLION for this endeavor. Since NOT going ground-up costs SIGNIFICANTLY less than supplying yourself from your own fabs AND your own process tech R&D (such reasons is why Samsung, Intel, and IBM are basically the ONLY semiconductor verticals left in the whole world after AMD jettisoned theirs a while back)

Question remains that what in the world is the Samster gonna do with even ONE trillion (#1 Samsung is only about a third of that trillion...) let alone SEVEN trillion.

For reference, TSMC is "only" spending 40 Billion in Arizona, and that's spread across TWO FABS, a project that's already huge in every way (21k construction jobs, world's biggest cranes that couldn't fit on a 2-lane, etc.):
https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/2022/12/07/what-to-know-phoenix-taiwan-semiconductor-factory/69707994007/

Quote

Between the two fabs, TSMC is sinking $40 billion into the projects. The company likely will qualify for federal grants under the CHIPS & Science Act when funding guidelines are announced early next year.

The fabs are expected to generate 21,000 construction jobs. They’re also going up with the help of one of the world’s largest cranes, a behemoth that workers must take apart and reassemble every time it moves to different job sites because it wouldn’t comfortably fit on even a two-lane highway.

Like the neurons vs transistors comparisons I've done before, I'm going to be extremely generous in this comparison:

• Ignore that Samsung has its own fabs already i.e. just ignore all those manufacturing plants, okay?
• Ignore the fact that Samsung does/make a whole load of other silicon stuff than just processors
• Ignore everything Samsung has built up over the decades, outside of investor valuation
• Instead of adding anything to OpenAI, just do separate new stuff, no creating verticals or anything despite any advantages of it and waste/opportunity costs of not going it

Open AI / Samster going to create a whole new R&D company that's about 20X times the size of Samsung (despite what he said about the uselessness of scaling up LLMs.............. guess he just did a huge 180 and double/triple/quadrippledown on the opposite.........) and farm out the results of that design to existing foundries.

Some design........... Why doesn't he work on a quantum computer instead? Why doesn't he invest exotic materials research (current foundries are more interested in refining processes. Sure they work with universities and all but that's hardly the same thing as pouring the entire company's process research resources into it!)??

Massively, massively, FRAUDULENT, "developmental posture." The Samster said he's focused on raising funds from UAE (United Arab Emerates.....) so he's counting on the desert oil barons and UAE royal family members there to fall for his money-draining scheme?

==============================

Let's give him the benefit of a sliver of doubt that he's actually going to build this "20X Samsung Uber Designhouse" that's going to eventually pump out silicon from the likes of Intel. What actual good is this going to do, in general?

Gary Marcus wrote an open letter to Sam Altman regarding this question.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-sam-altman

Quote

Dear Sam,

Why do you think that LLMs are going to “secure our collective future”? (Are you working on any technology other than LLMs?)

As Casey Newton recently argued “Generative AI clearly has many positive, creative uses... But looking back over the past year, it's clear that any benefits we have seen today have come at a high cost.”

How do we know that $7 trillion invested into LLMs and their infrastructure would not simply exacerbate those costs, grinding down content creators, women, and the environment, undermining democracy, destroying jobs, etc?

$7T might serve OpenAI well, and raise your public profile, but would it serve humanity? How certain of that bet can we be? What's the rush? (Also, what has the $100 billion grind on driverless cars brought society? Might people have rushed in too soon, technology-wise?)

The risk of premature commitment looms large.

– Gary Marcus

Uh, I'd say that Altman care for exactly none of those things. He's trying to raise trillions and pay himself billions.

[swansont]

58 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Now for the second part, since it's allegedly "non-interesting."

Who alleged that it was “non-interesting”

The quote was that your thread was not fostering interesting discussion, and, frankly, it did not. It was just hyperbole. Your objections seem to be predicated on the UAE investors not being able to do their own due diligence and make an informed decision. Has any money changed hands, or even been obligated?

 

58 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I do find it "interesting" how Sam is going to a foundry now, complete with a Government wig who's tagging along:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/ifs-direct-connect.html

Your link doesn’t seem to be supporting your claim. It’s not a news story. It’s an ad for a workshop.

[AIkonoklazt]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Who alleged that it was “non-interesting”

The quote was that your thread was not fostering interesting discussion, and, frankly, it did not. It was just hyperbole. Your objections seem to be predicated on the UAE investors not being able to do their own due diligence and make an informed decision. Has any money changed hands, or even been obligated?

 

Your link doesn’t seem to be supporting your claim. It’s not a news story. It’s an ad for a workshop.

Let's be generous and discount his tweet, and that he's going to make his own manly fabs (ref what ex-AMD CEO Sanders said a long while back)

That's still 20X Samsung

How is that part "hyperbole"

[StringJunky]

Hopefully, people are forewarned after learning the historical antics of the FAANG founding CEO's and how they got where they are.

I have read recently that, collectively, Western-cultured minds are not naturally tuned to the demands, complexity and intensity of large scale chip manufacturing. We don't seem to do precision and conformity as a form of cultural second nature, like the Eastern Asians. They are doing this stuff today, and not us, for a reason, methinks.

Edited February 13 by StringJunky

[TheVat]

20 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Hopefully, people are forewarned after learning the historical antics of the FAANG founding CEO's and how they got where they are.

I have read recently that, collectively, Western-cultured minds are not naturally tuned to the demands, complexity and intensity of large scale chip manufacturing. We don't seem to do precision and conformity as a form of cultural second nature, like the Eastern Asians. They are doing this stuff today, and not us, for a reason, methinks.

FAANG seems to have become a retronym, since two of the companies have changed their names (it would now be MAANA, I guess?).  I am never sure how to take stereotypes of "eastern" or "western" minds, but I suspect some folks at companies like Mercedes, Zeiss, Bosch, Porsche et al would dispute that Europeans (well, Germans, at least) can't do complexity, precision and efficiency.  

(somewhere I hear Basil Fawlty yelling don't talk about the war!)

 

2 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Gary Marcus wrote an open letter to Sam Altman regarding this question.

I share his bafflement.  Maybe Altman has a Prometheus complex, like some others in the tech world.  Are there not people in his circle who can talk him off the ledge?  This does seem to verge on delusional.

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, TheVat said:

FAANG seems to have become a retronym, since two of the companies have changed their names (it would now be MAANA, I guess?).  I am never sure how to take stereotypes of "eastern" or "western" minds, but I suspect some folks at companies like Mercedes, Zeiss, Bosch, Porsche et al would dispute that Europeans (well, Germans, at least) can't do complexity, precision and efficiency.  

(somewhere I hear Basil Fawlty yelling don't talk about the war!)

 

I share his bafflement.  Maybe Altman has a Prometheus complex, like some others in the tech world.  Are there not people in his circle who can talk him off the ledge?  This does seem to verge on delusional.

"It's not rocket science - it's much more difficult" goes one of the inside jokes. The link gives a run-through of the chip making process and issues.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-chip-production-why-hard-to-make-semiconductors/

[iNow]

25 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Are there not people in his circle who can talk him off the ledge?  This does seem to verge on delusional.

More likely IMO is he sees how slow the pace of the hardware production has become, how shortages are everywhere unable to scale with massive and still accelerating demand, and he wishes to get key players thinking in a fundamentally bigger way and to act to meet the need as he defines it. 

Reach for the stars, maybe you’ll get lucky and reach the moon. That sort of thing. 

Edited February 13 by iNow

[TheVat]

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

More likely IMO is he sees how slow the pace of the hardware production has become, his shortages are everywhere unable to scale with demand, and wishes to get people thinking in a fundamentally bigger way to meet the need as he sees it. 

Reach for the stars, maybe you’ll get lucky and reach the moon. 

Could be.  Makes me think of the Shaw quote

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

 

[StringJunky]

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

Reach for the stars, maybe you’ll get lucky and reach the moon. That sort of thing. 

Embedded in that idea, is all the associated waste that we can't afford ecologically.

[iNow]

7 minutes ago, TheVat said:

the Shaw quote

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

When Steve Jobs did it, they described it as his “reality distortion field.”

4 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Embedded in that idea, is all the associated waste that we can't afford ecologically.

I have no doubt we can minimize waste if we choose to. We usually choose profit though. 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Let's be generous and discount his tweet, and that he's going to make his own manly fabs (ref what ex-AMD CEO Sanders said a long while back)

That's still 20X Samsung

How is that part "hyperbole"

I didn’t specify what the hyperbole was. How is it reasonable to assume that this was it? 

[CharonY]

55 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Hopefully, people are forewarned after learning the historical antics of the FAANG founding CEO's and how they got where they are.

I have read recently that, collectively, Western-cultured minds are not naturally tuned to the demands, complexity and intensity of large scale chip manufacturing. We don't seem to do precision and conformity as a form of cultural second nature, like the Eastern Asians. They are doing this stuff today, and not us, for a reason, methinks.

I have read something similar, but to be frank, I usually find these types of arguments unconvincing. It sounds like a just-so story to me with little actual evidence with retrospective reasoning.

Papers that have discussed these shifts mostly focus on market forces, such as a time of increased regional demand (especially from China), huge investments in local leaders in the semiconductor business. In addition there were specific business developments, such as fabless manufacturing, where many companies design chips but outsource production to foundries. Originally, semiconductor business where dominated by firms that do in-house production and design, such as Intel). However, eventually the fabless model increased its market share and the existing foundries happened to be in East Asia, who happened to have their market share increased. As a strong interconnection with this foundries, fabless industries and the electronics manufacturer is extremely beneficial (e.g. in terms of response time), there was a strong incentive to also create local R&D centers, further strengthening the move to the East.

So there are many factors that could explain chip manufacturing which I find more convincing than a somewhat handwavy cultural explanation.

[AIkonoklazt]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

I didn’t specify what the hyperbole was. How is it reasonable to assume that this was it? 

Okay. Could you state what the hyperbole was?

[swansont]

1 minute ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Okay. Could you state what the hyperbole was?

“Massively, massively, FRAUDULENT, "developmental posture." The Samster said he's focused on raising funds from UAE (United Arab Emerates.....) so he's counting on the desert oil barons and UAE royal family members there to fall for his money-draining scheme?”

You’ve not shown any fraud or criminal behavior. You assume it’s fraud, but you don’t know the details (or haven’t shared them). You don’t have any evidence. It’s all conjecture.

[AIkonoklazt]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Hopefully, people are forewarned after learning the historical antics of the FAANG founding CEO's and how they got where they are.

I have read recently that, collectively, Western-cultured minds are not naturally tuned to the demands, complexity and intensity of large scale chip manufacturing. We don't seem to do precision and conformity as a form of cultural second nature, like the Eastern Asians. They are doing this stuff today, and not us, for a reason, methinks.

(I saw TheVat quoting you, forgot I still have you on block, unblocked)

I don't think anyone who is outside of the industry, either in north/south/east/west, would or perhaps even could comprehend the scale. A colleague joked to me about fusion power, and I kinda doubt if that's enough even if it outputs 10x. Just that monster data-center network used to model-condition (hate using the word "train" in reference to machines) and respond with uh... $7T worth or even $1T worth of hardware is on the level of entire usage swaths of medium-sized COUNTRIES, not just cities as in the case of power-gobbling crypo-mining farms.

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

“Massively, massively, FRAUDULENT, "developmental posture." The Samster said he's focused on raising funds from UAE (United Arab Emerates.....) so he's counting on the desert oil barons and UAE royal family members there to fall for his money-draining scheme?”

You’ve not shown any fraud or criminal behavior. You assume it’s fraud, but you don’t know the details (or haven’t shared them). You don’t have any evidence. It’s all conjecture.

I'm going to respond with the same sort of line I used in the first thread.

Let me put it this way. Someone ask you for $7000 dollars for something that could be done for much less than $500, on top of the fact that he already acknowledged elsewhere to someone else that spending money on that particular thing would be useless. Are you still not going to call this a grift?

 

37 minutes ago, iNow said:

More likely IMO is he sees how slow the pace of the hardware production has become, how shortages are everywhere unable to scale with massive and still accelerating demand, and he wishes to get key players thinking in a fundamentally bigger way and to act to meet the need as he defines it. 

Reach for the stars, maybe you’ll get lucky and reach the moon. That sort of thing. 

It doesn't jive with his very own rhetoric. He himself already said scaling up isn't going to help. Let's put aside any of his rhetoric for a moment; The sheer scale is already off the chart. Nothing, literally nothing, takes nearly that much.

 

NASA Space Shuttle program from start to finish: $209 billion (2010 dollars) including 134 flights  https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises-209-billion.html

......that's start to finish. Not just start.

If you're talking "moon shot," well that's still not it.

The entire Apollo 1960-1973 program was $257 billion (2020 dollars) https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

 

No.......... you're not waving this one off

[iNow]

44 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

He himself already said scaling up isn't going to help.

Please share source so I may read it in context.
 

Edited February 13 by iNow

[AIkonoklazt]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Please share source so I may read it in context.
 

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-ceo-sam-altman-the-age-of-giant-ai-models-is-already-over/

$7T points to not "giant" but "beyond gargantuan"

Hey what the heck I was gonna link the following smoking-gun tweet that someone forwarded to me in HIS SUPPORT of Altman and Altman DELETED IT! Why?? That's not nice at all!!

[swansont]

6 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I'm going to respond with the same sort of line I used in the first thread.

Let me put it this way. Someone ask you for $7000 dollars for something that could be done for much less than $500, on top of the fact that he already acknowledged elsewhere to someone else that spending money on that particular thing would be useless. Are you still not going to call this a grift?

I don’t know the details of what he’s proposing (and neither do you), so no. The issue here is that you are imagining what he’s proposing, and it’s not worth trillions. The first intelligent consideration would probably be “That’s not worth the money, so that’s probably not what the proposal is” 

You are making an argument from incredulity.

You’re also suggesting that the potential investors can’t do their own due diligence. Can’t they just say “no thanks”?

 

[iNow]

11 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-ceo-sam-altman-the-age-of-giant-ai-models-is-already-over/

$7T points to not "giant" but "beyond gargantuan"

Hey what the heck I was gonna link the following smoking-gun tweet that someone forwarded to me in HIS SUPPORT of Altman and Altman DELETED IT! Why?? That's not nice at all!!

Please assume I'm not following your rant... logic.

How is this equivalent to him "admitting it is not going to help?" Can you please elaborate?

[AIkonoklazt]

On 2/13/2024 at 2:04 AM, swansont said:

 

You are making an argument from incredulity.

You’re also suggesting that the potential investors can’t do their own due diligence. Can’t they just say “no thanks”?

 

I'm arguing from evidence. Each fab is $20B. Samsung itself is about $300B.

"Someone is trying to commit fraud, but that's okay because people will see through it" doesn't make a defense, sorry.

On 2/13/2024 at 8:32 AM, iNow said:

Please assume I'm not following your rant... logic.

How is this equivalent to him "admitting it is not going to help?" Can you please elaborate?

I'm not following yours.

Which part of this following quote of his from the article don't you understand? Specifically, which part of it implies scaling up projects to the tune of trillions of dollars?
 

Quote

“I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models”

 

[swansont]

1 minute ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I'm arguing from evidence. Each fab is $20B. Samsung itself is about $300B.

Where’s your evidence of what he ‘s actually proposing? Not the news summaries. The actual proposal details.

IOW, how do you know he’s not proposing 500 fabs, and power plants and other infrastructure to run them?

1 minute ago, AIkonoklazt said:

"Someone is trying to commit fraud, but that's okay because people will see through it" doesn't make a defense, sorry.

You haven’t shown fraud. Incredulity isn’t evidence, no matter how much you want it to be.

[AIkonoklazt]

11 minutes ago, swansont said:

Where’s your evidence of what he ‘s actually proposing? Not the news summaries. The actual proposal details.

IOW, how do you know he’s not proposing 500 fabs, and power plants and other infrastructure to run them?

You haven’t shown fraud. Incredulity isn’t evidence, no matter how much you want it to be.

Because TSMC has 12 fabs that are processor fabs, Samsung about 5, and Intel has 17.

That's what... 34. Let's round that up to 50 or something. Still not even a tenth.

Look inside your own computer. What processors are there? If you have an AMD rig, everything's TSMC. Nvidia cards are either TSMC or Samsung. Intel stuff are Intel and some TSMC. Same with anything that goes on server racks.

10x the capacity of the entire world just for AI workload. Uh, no...... There are reasons why not, first I'd like to mention that existing infrastructure already handle AI, that's the Amazon guys with the servers they rent out, but OpenAI is probably going go with Microsoft's own Azure infrastructure first (.......and all the Bing/"MS Copilot" stuff already runs there......)

No. Not incredulity. It's just how much it's not gonna take.

[StringJunky]

On 2/13/2024 at 2:56 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

(I saw TheVat quoting you, forgot I still have you on block, unblocked)

I don't think anyone who is outside of the industry, either in north/south/east/west, would or perhaps even could comprehend the scale. A colleague joked to me about fusion power, and I kinda doubt if that's enough even if it outputs 10x. Just that monster data-center network used to model-condition (hate using the word "train" in reference to machines) and respond with uh... $7T worth or even $1T worth of hardware is on the level of entire usage swaths of medium-sized COUNTRIES, not just cities as in the case of power-gobbling crypo-mining farms.

I'm going to respond with the same sort of line I used in the first thread.

Let me put it this way. Someone ask you for $7000 dollars for something that could be done for much less than $500, on top of the fact that he already acknowledged elsewhere to someone else that spending money on that particular thing would be useless. Are you still not going to call this a grift?

I see where you are coming from. In your mind the numbers won't compute. That's how I'm feeling about Trump and his ability to find the money he is increasingly liable for, as an example. At the end of the day, the prevailing resource availability sets the limits at what can be realized.

Edited February 18 by StringJunky
added ending

[AIkonoklazt]

7 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

I see where you are coming from. In your mind the numbers won't compute. That's how I'm feeling about Trump and his ability to find the money he is increasingly liable for, as an example. At the end of the day, the prevailing resource availability sets the limits at what can be realized.

AFAIK nobody has done the math on the ecological disaster that $7T would bring about, but there is some noise being made about it starting with Hugging Face's climate lead:

https://venturebeat.com/ai/sam-altman-wants-up-to-7-trillion-for-ai-chips-the-natural-resources-required-would-be-mind-boggling/

Quote

what is not in doubt is the environmental impact of such a massive effort, according to Sasha Luccioni, climate lead and researcher at Hugging Face.

 

“If it does work out, the amount of natural resources that will be required is just mind-boggling,” she told VentureBeat. “Even if the energy is renewable (which it isn’t guaranteed to be), the quantity of water and rare earth minerals required is astronomical.”

For comparison, in September 2023 Fortune reported that AI tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption; Meta’s Llama 2 model reportedly guzzled twice as much water as Llama 1; and a 2023 study found that OpenAI’s GPT-3 training consumed 700,000 liters of water.

 

[iNow]

You’re trying awfully hard to make butter out of cream.