If Nvidia were interested in "open" AI, they would spend time to collaborate with AMD, etc. to build an (updated) open alternative to CUDA. That's probably the most closed part of the whole stack right now.
sounds · 31m ago
Nvidia is interested in commoditizing their complements. It's a business strategy to decrease the power of OpenAI (for instance).
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.
amelius · 2m ago
But AI depends on a small number of tensor operators, primitives which can be relatively easily implemented by competitors, so compute is very close to being a commodity when it comes to AI.
someone7x · 15m ago
> commoditizing their complements
Feels like a modern euphemism for “subjugate their neighbors”.
jvanderbot · 10m ago
Business has always been a civilized version of war, and one which will always capture us in similar ways, so I guess wartime analogies are appropriate?
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.
arthurcolle · 24m ago
Why is OpenAI a threat to Nvidia? They are still highly dependent on those GPUs
vlovich123 · 5m ago
If OpenAI becomes the only buyer, they can push around Nvidia and invest in alternatives to blunt their power. If OpenAI is one of many customers, then they’re not a strong bargaining position and Nvidia gets to set the terms.
patates · 17m ago
Maybe if they grow too much they'd develop their own chips. Also if one company wins, as in they wipe out the competition, they'd have much less incentive to train more and more advanced models.
grim_io · 19m ago
Google shows that Nvidia is not necessary. How long until more follow?
NitpickLawyer · 7m ago
Tbf, goog started a long time ago with their TPUs. And they've had some bumps along the way. It's not as easy as one might think. There are certainly efforts to produce alternatives, but it's not an easy task. Even the ASIC-like providers like cerberas and grok are having problems with large models. They seemed very promising with SLMs, but once MoEs became a thing they started to struggle.
tomrod · 18m ago
Two concepts
- 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
next_xibalba · 14m ago
Who is the one buyer in the Nvidia scenario? How would that benefit Nvidia?
KaoruAoiShiho · 1m ago
It would hurt nvidia not benefit, that's why nvidia spends a lot of effort to prevent that from happening, and it's not the case currently.
kookamamie · 32m ago
Indeed. This is throwing pennies in virtue-signaling openness.
bongodongobob · 33m ago
That's AMDs fault, not Nvidia's.
datadrivenangel · 52m ago
Suggest changing the title to:
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.
brunohaid · 46m ago
Maybe that'll help them hire someone who can at least respond to S2 API key requests...
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.
zoobab · 28m ago
"Open" like an open source FPGA implementation of their chips?
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.
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.
- 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
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.
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.