Sam Altman:
A lot of people want local inference, and somehow they assume that the problem is solved now because we have open-source models, we’re going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we’re not going to need all the stuff in the data center.
But from a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time.
Like you want maximum utilisation in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment,
And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that
TL;DR Guy selling product: “Here’s why owning your own product instead of renting it from me is a terrible idea”
Going cheap almost always ends in a more expensive repair bill down the line.
Likewise, doing the most convenient thing to satisfy one’s own desires is probably the most ill-advised course of action. Mainly, because it makes other people take the most convenient course of action to remove the other person from being a problem in their lives altogether.
Sure… locking your customer in is always a good business option.
But the point remains… for any given demand a big data center always is cheaper.
Cheapest doesn’t mean best for all uses cases.