“If they force the entire world to take 18 days to really start thinking about the deployment of all this hardware… is that going to be the more dangerous problem for the AI industry.” Eli the Computer Guy joins the Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about Samsung employees taking strike action over unfair distribution of the profits of surging memory prices and whether the AI bubble can survive the 18 days pause.
ADVERTISEMENT
Solidarity with the workers, A.I. slop can get in the bin.
These data centers are not being built but NVIDIA is selling millions of gpus. Where are these gpus? How many are sitting in warehouses becoming obsolete?
This is how you know it’s an Ai Bubble. The people selling the shovels like Samsung stated they will not expand production to meet AI and consumer demand and have merely shifted to AI production instead. They don’t want to be on the hook for massive losses once the bubble collapses if they expand overall production to meet demand. This way they can milk the AI bubble while suffering very little exposure when the bubble collapses. They will merely just spend a few months converting their lines back to consumer products.
Awesome to see Eli on the tech report
The real "cargo cult" is everyone believing that AI will replace their workers. LLMs are nothing more than randomized guessers and companies cannot rely on them to deliver meaningful output outside of simple tasks. Eli suggesting that companies will no longer need some of the work because AI can do it contradicts his earlier comment about how OpenAI bought a consultant group to help them figure out what AI can actually do.
That would be great. Screw AI
Every Friday we have Ed on telling us the data centers aren't really being built on schedule and all the hardware is already pre-ordered too far in advance. I bet you these companies can just wait 18 days and experience no actual supply shortage. But acknowledging that breaks Kayfabe around the whole AI/DC bubble...
Well what do you know two channels I watch have collided
Eli is an OG.
been hearing this 'overhiring' claim for years now. covid was 5 years ago
Eli is the most sane man right now
With these layoffs. Ask simple question. What have these companies released in past 6 years? Like what new thing? Outside the AI crap. I still haven't come up with any good answer.
Samsung is making so much crazy $ that they should just pay their workers to stay competitive. Would be good public relations too.
With all due respect to Eli The Computer Guy, who says that other tech workers will fail if they go on strike because despite mass layoffs, tech companies are doing fine: you don't know what you're talking about. Companies who routinely fire people in mass are losing money because not only they don't get the AI productivity gains they also have to (quietly) rehire people because AI is generating more work, not less. Companies fire in mass because historically, this has caused their stock price to go up. People that don't get fired have to do 2 or 3 times the amount of work for equal pay. Firing people is not about cost cutting, not in tech anyway, it is a power move and finally tech workers are starting to see through this bullshit and unionising.
If a company is capable of laying off up to nearly 50% of their staff and continue forward in any degree of functionality, that indicates that not only did they not need those people but they had grossly over hired and had been a bloated company up until AI gave them an excuse to eliminate people without worrying about the backlash in the stock market.
I hope they didn't delete the old Google algorithms. I really dislike the "AI" overviews at the top of every search.
I think most people are not realizing what the AI memory allocation is creating in the rest of the electronics world. Maybe the strike will accelerate it, but is not really important anymore. First memory is not only used in servers it is used in data center infrastructure equipment. No memory means no infrastructure, which means no datacenter. Second there are a lot more components on GPUs and mainboards, some MLCC values are not available anymore to smaller customers or have very long lead time. Again this is hitting the whole electronic sector. So we are slowly walking towards covid level electronics allocation. Basically the "AI Boom" is eating itself.
So awesome you had Eli on!! Bring him back regularly!
Hearing someone talk so plainly about the sheer scale of pandemic-era overhiring, as well of the fact that many of these people are genuinely useless - either because there's nothing for them to actually do, because there's too many cooks, or because they know they can game HR and blend into the noise - is shockingly refreshing.
Yes! American tech companies overhired for years, but especially during the pandemic. All these AI layoffs are just cutting those jobs they never should have hired for in the first place.