alt Hacker NewsBut there's no such thing as compute cost in the abstract. What exactly is compute cost for AI? Does it include:
• Inference used for training? Modern training pipelines aren't just gradient descent, there's a ton of inference used in them too.
• Gradient descent itself?
• The CPUs and disks storing and managing the datasets?
• The web servers?
• The people paid to swap out failed components at the dc?
Let's say you try and define it to mean the same as unit economics - what does it cost you to add an additional customer vs what they bring in. There's still no way to do this calculation. It's like trying to compute the unit economics of a software company. Sure, if you ignore all the R&D costs of building the software in the first place and all the R&D costs of staying competitive with new versions, then the unit economics look amazing, but there's still plenty of loss-making software startups in the world.
Unit economics are a useful heuristic for businesses where there aren't any meaningful base costs required to stay in the game because they let you think about setup costs separately. Manufacturing toys, private education, farming... lots of businesses where your costs are totally dominated by unit economics. AI isn't like that.
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Your point is that there are more relevant quantities to calculate for checking economic viability is fair, but that doesn't negate the "cost of inference" being an interesting metric in itself.
Gross margins and cost of revenue are well defined accounting terms that apply to any type of business.
> Does it include:
> Inference used for training? Modern training pipelines aren't just gradient descent, there's a ton of inference used in them too.
No because this is training and not inference. Just like how R&D costs for a drug aren't part of COGS either.
> Gradient descent itself?
No
> The CPUs and disks storing and managing the datasets?
Yes
> The web servers?
Yes
> The people paid to swap out failed components at the dc?
Yes to the extent they are swapping for inference and not training. If the same employees do both then the accountants will estimate what percent of their time is dedicated to each and adjust their cost accordingly.