The Concorde is an interesting case for many reasons, and of course there are more variables that went into its discontinuation. Ultimately, it did come down to market forces and competition, which makes it a suitable (but by no means perfect) analogy for AI.
Thanks Jurgen for this analysis. I particularly appreciated it - as all your issues, by the way - because it put the emphasis on the consumer, on the possibilities and on the "victories" that potentially emerge. I think that a consumer-oriented perspective, together with the more technical one, is also very important to understand, analyze and break down the narratives and key factors that drive certain discourses and make them evolve from more technical to "pop".
I globally agree with what you write (as usual, I'm a fan) but let me suggest another perspective. What you describe is true for consumers and most usage, but not for the military, I would bet the thinking within the current "bicephalous US eagle or Musktrump" is that if you want super smart weaponised AI, then you want the best and don't care about the cost? It's a bad news for humanity but might the reason why Musktrump will push forward with their Stargate project.
Well intelligence doesn’t have the same kind of diminish returns airplane speed has. Instead I’d say it has increasing marginal returns that make it very much worthwhile to run even very expensive ais assuming the intelligence doesn’t level off. An iq 150 scientist is worth orders of magnitude more than one at 130 all else beeing equal. And the returns from those scientific advances invariably feed back to the populous sooner or later as well, no?
Intelligence = energy. AI requires big GPU clusters, which are expensive to build and operate. The fact that an expensive model to train, like 4o or o1, can be now be replicated for a fraction of the cost and ran more cheaply means it will be harder to generate a return on investment on that CapEx build-out. So if I was SoftBank, I would think twice about that Stargate investment.
Concorde is an interesting analogy, that we write about the intro to The Future Normal (my book)
My 2c - it was a combination of push & pull, beyond just cost:
There were the sustainability & noise issues.
But also, private jets became more accessible (for those with lots of $$$), while offering greater flexibility than a single route 'mass' option.
Plus, on longer routes, wifi & lie-flat beds made the flying experience far less 'costly' (in terms of lost productivity) for business travellers.
The Concorde is an interesting case for many reasons, and of course there are more variables that went into its discontinuation. Ultimately, it did come down to market forces and competition, which makes it a suitable (but by no means perfect) analogy for AI.
Thanks Jurgen for this analysis. I particularly appreciated it - as all your issues, by the way - because it put the emphasis on the consumer, on the possibilities and on the "victories" that potentially emerge. I think that a consumer-oriented perspective, together with the more technical one, is also very important to understand, analyze and break down the narratives and key factors that drive certain discourses and make them evolve from more technical to "pop".
I globally agree with what you write (as usual, I'm a fan) but let me suggest another perspective. What you describe is true for consumers and most usage, but not for the military, I would bet the thinking within the current "bicephalous US eagle or Musktrump" is that if you want super smart weaponised AI, then you want the best and don't care about the cost? It's a bad news for humanity but might the reason why Musktrump will push forward with their Stargate project.
Well intelligence doesn’t have the same kind of diminish returns airplane speed has. Instead I’d say it has increasing marginal returns that make it very much worthwhile to run even very expensive ais assuming the intelligence doesn’t level off. An iq 150 scientist is worth orders of magnitude more than one at 130 all else beeing equal. And the returns from those scientific advances invariably feed back to the populous sooner or later as well, no?
How about those GPUs we run the intelligence on?
Id suppose increasing demand will induce higher prices until supply catches up, no?
Intelligence = energy. AI requires big GPU clusters, which are expensive to build and operate. The fact that an expensive model to train, like 4o or o1, can be now be replicated for a fraction of the cost and ran more cheaply means it will be harder to generate a return on investment on that CapEx build-out. So if I was SoftBank, I would think twice about that Stargate investment.