[LINK] 'Business is unsustainable for the 100+ LLMs competing in China.'

[Tom Worthington]

On 8/7/24 19:25, Stephen Loosley wrote:

> China's AI model glut is a 'significant waste due to scarce real-world applications for 100+ LLMs says Baidu CEO
> By Jowi Morales published 16 hours ago https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chinas-ai-model-glut-is-a-significant-waste-of-resources-due-to-scarce-real-world-applications-says-baidu-ceo
> 
> China's AI model glut is a 'significant waste due to scarce real-world applications ...

Provided it is just entrepreneurs wasting their money, and they did not 
take government grants or investments from the public, there is little 
harm done. If training the Large Language Model was done using coal 
fired electricity, there will be a planet warming effect. But unlike the 
fad for rented electric bicycles, there are not mountains of hardware to 
dispose of. 
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/

The AI companies tend to buy their computing power from cloud providers, 
so it can be used by other customers & will not be wasted. About all 
that will remain of these speculative ventures is data on the servers, 
to be erased when the venture stops paying the storage charge.

There might be scope for recycling the detritus from failed LLMs, like a 
scrap data market.


-- 
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
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