183
The AI that we'll have after AI (Doctorow) (pluralistic.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
82 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

When the AI bubble pops, what will remain? Cheap GPUs at firesale prices, skilled applied statisticians looking for work, and open source models that already do impressive things, but will grow far more impressive after being optimized:

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 41 points 1 year ago (6 children)

There were supposed to be cheap GPUs after the crypto bubble burst

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    There were when the first Ethereum bubble burst. That was one easier for the average person to get into with gamer GPUs, and they flooded the market on eBay as soon as it was no longer profitable.

    Bitcoin won't do that, because it hasn't been based on GPUs for a long, long time. Ethereum doesn't even work like that anymore.

    The AI bubble popping will only flood the market with GPUs that are useful for running AI models. The GPUs in AI datacenters often don't even have a display output connector. I think Corey is overstating his case on that one. Most likely, those GPUs are headed to the landfill.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You can still use such GPU as an accelerator either for running AI, or for gaming. In either case, given that you workload is Vulkan-based on Linux, you can use vkdevicechooser.

    Of course, you will need a second GPU (even the CPU's integrated one) to connect your display(s).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That has never worked well. It might give high average framerates on paper, but it introduces jitter that produces a worse overall experience. In fact, Gamers Nexus just came out with a video on a better way to measure this, and it touches on showing the problem with multi-GPU setups:

    https://youtu.be/qDnXe6N8h_c

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I think that you misunderstood my comment.

    The video shows how SLI makes the frame pacing more inconsistent, which is a known issue when multiple GPUs work together to solve the same problem.

    What I am talking about is more like Nvidia Optimus. This is a common technology on laptops, where the display is connected to the low power iGPU, while games can use the dedicated Nvidia chipset.

    I don't know about potential frame pacing issues on these technologies, and it seems like it was not addressed in the video either. However, I know that newer laptops have a switching chip that connects the display to the dedicated GPU, which, I think, aims on lowering the latency.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    The AI bubble doesn't mean AI/LLMs aren't useful. It means datacenter speculation can't make money.

    those GPUs are headed to the landfill.

    They'll just have a similar discount to the Ethereum switch.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent