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.
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.
Feels like a modern euphemism for “subjugate their neighbors”.
CUDA is what they sell, it makes more sense for them to charge for hardware and give the hardware-locked software away for free.
We have dozens of companies building foundational models and they all target a single vendor to supply all the hardware? Make it make sense! Yes, I know models run on AMD too, but the fact is, Nvidia, who's clearly doing a great job, is a literal monopoly. We need viable alternatives.
This deal was done with CirraScale, who are great people. It is important to point out that they are also one of the 13 official AMD Cloud Partners. I'm on the list too.
I've laid out my thesis at length in past comments, which I don't care to repeat, but the gist is: During the ~2010-2014 period (the time where the ecosystem gap really widened), Nvidia purposfully didn't implement OpenCL 2.0 while pushing CUDA, which made cross-platform solutions uncompetitive.
The stated "US dominance" goal just pays lip service to what appeals to the funders, kind of like how supercomputing projects traditionally claim that they contribute to curing disease or producing clean energy. (Even if it's something far removed from concrete applications, like high fidelity numerical simulations of aqueous solutions.)
Any country tries to dominate any field if they can do it, it's just human nature. Why is that a bad thing?
That constant competition for superiority between nations is how humanity has evolved from hunter gatherer to having tractors, microwave ovens, airplanes, internet and penicillin.
Congratulations to the team at Ai2!
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.
It has been done before:
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.
I'm surprised we haven't heard about OpenAI pushing a facebook style OpenCompute project or ARM (acorn, apple, VLSI) or similar for the stack below them.
[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
I don’t want to be cynical, it’s just that the world has left very few options otherwise.
