alt Hacker NewsHow are all these related news regarding silicon shortages surprising at all? It was well predicted that while 2023 chip turmoil[1] was happening, big AI aimed to secure almost all of the demand[2] intended for consumer markets regarding RAM chips so as to win the AI race going forward from that date. They cannibalized almost the entirety of the supply chain, so that they could sell you the incredibly subsidized AIaaS[3] with still considerably higher inference and astronomically higher training process without as of late 2026, failing to achieve any meaningful productivity at all[4]. The serfs now will be happy to own their decade old DDR4 architecture.
[1]: https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/artic...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-supplier-sk-hynix-...
[3]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.24616
[4]: https://www.apollo.com/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/No...
Replies
Yep. To the point it makes you wonder if the "AI bubble" is totally misunderstood. It's less "AI bubble" and much more "Monopolize computing". Buy up computers until most companies have no choice but to use cloud, then buy out chip fabs entirely, then never give anyone a working free-programmable computer again. All software goes through approval from Google/Apple/Microsoft.
You know, what Microsoft has been trying with Palladium (can't risk general purpose computers! People might commit, oh the horror, copyright infringement, with those!)
Imho, as hardware keeps getting better, it seems to me this is the only thing that can make cloud investments worth it in the long term (which is only 2-3 years away) for hyperscalers. It's the only explanation. If OpenAI/SpaceX/Musk/... really thought AI would take over all jobs, they wouldn't be investing in compute, they'd be buying up farms, land, harbors, mines, bankrupt factories, fucking tax prep businesses ...
Make compute only possible within Goog/Amazon/Microsoft/... walled gardens ... that's the play. And this AI is a cute technology that conveniently needs lots of compute, but it's not even the actual core of the play. A very simple very old style monopoly grab, you know, the business plan people got convicted for trying in ancient Persia, 5000 years ago.
No productivity from AI is a crazy conclusion to make given the impact we already know it's having on software development. Just because you can't see it in the data yet doesn't mean it's not there, which is what the article you cited says.
Remember too that these models only really became useful less than a year ago with Opus 4.6 being an inflection point. It takes a long time for the economy to reorganize itself so it's not surprising we're not immediately seeing the payoff in economic data.