Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

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>AFAICT, this hasn't happened for any "cloud" compute company that has been in business for -say- at least five years.

Most cloud software has had moats. AI does not. And AI is eating software, which means those historical margins are going away for a lot of cloud software,too. That's what the SAAS-pocalypse is about.

>Assuming that you're not doing anything that needs exotic system administrators

Remember, these are also going to be AI.

>Assuming I haven't fucked up my math, [2][3] the cost of the hardware here is more than three times the cost of power.

This is a fair point, but it just means the COGS is higher, not that the margin is any better. I stand by the prediction that AI margins will be very slim.

> I stand by the prediction that AI margins will be very slim.

This I don't disagree with... but you and I probably believe this for very different reasons. However, the rest of what you've said -in this comment and the first one I replied to- is just bonkers word salad.

> is just bonkers word salad.

I think you're placing much too much emphasis on the "electricity" comment, which I admit was an overstatement. But the description of the economics driving data center deals is quite parseable for someone familiar with the financial structure of the AI industry.

As for the rest, if you point out the parts that you don't understand, I'd be happy to elaborate.

> I think you're placing much too much emphasis on the "electricity" comment...

No. I addressed your electricity assertion here. [0] I'm calling nearly all of your commentary word salad because it reads like the "conversation" in the picture behind the "...cognitotoxic" cut on this Mastodon post [1], just with the "spiritual woo" vocabulary module pulled out and the "finance bro" and "LLM Tech Exuberance" vocabulary modules loaded in.

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50203639>

[1] <https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117492479270310799>

Ha, now that's a word salad.^^^^^ Well done, I appreciate a well-crafted ironic troll as much as the next man.

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