Nvidia dreams of a world where there are lots of "open" alternatives to OpenAI, like there are lots of open game engines and lots open software in general. All buying closed Nvidia chips.
- Monopsony is the inverse of Monopoly -- one buyer. Walmart is often a monopsony for suppliers (exclusive or near exclusive).
- Desire for vertical integration and value extraction, related to #1 but with some additional nuances
They really need to avoid the situation in the console market, where the fact there's only 3 customers means almost no margins on console chips.
Feels like a modern euphemism for “subjugate their neighbors”.
Still it feels awful black and white to phrase it that way when this is a clear net good and better alignment of incentives than before.
Meanwhile, the companies running data centers will look for ways to support alternatives to Nvidia. That’s how they keep costs down.
It’s a good way to play companies off each other, when it works.
A company like Cerebras (founded in 2015) proves that this is true.
The moat is not in computer architecture. I'd say the real moat is in semiconductor fabrication.
Semiconductor fabrication is a high risk business.
Nvidia invested heavily in CUDA and out-competed AMD (and Intel). They are working hard to keep their edge in developer mindshare, while chasing hardware profits at the same time.
Oh my.
Please people, try to think back to your engineering classes. Remember the project where you worked with a group to design a processor? I do. Worst semester of my life. (Screw whoever even came up with that damn real analysis math class.) And here's the kicker, I know I'll be dating myself here, but all I had to do for my part was tape it out. Still sucked.
Not sure I'd call the necessary processor design work here "relatively easy"? Even for highly experienced, extremely bright people, this is not "relatively easy".
Far more easy to make the software a commodity. Believe me.
Being open is great, but if over the course of 6 months 3 different entities (including 2 well known universities) apply and send more than a dozen follow ups to 3 different "Reach out to us!" emails with exactly 0 response, the "open" starts sounding like it's coming from Facebook.
Imagine running a model trained by the degenerates on 4chan. Models that encourage you to cheat on your homework, happily crank out photos of world leaders banging farm animals, and gleefully generate the worst gore imaginable. And best of all, any junior high schooler on the planet can do it.
That’s how you know this technology has arrived. None of this sanitized, lawyer approved, safety weenie certified, three letter agency authorized nonsense we have now. Until it’s all local, it’s just an extension of the existing regime.
datadrivenangel•1h ago
NSF and NVIDIA award Ai2 $152M to support building a fully open AI ecosystem
To better indicate that this is not related to OpenAI and that the group intends to release everything needed to train their models.