…the sum of the parts [DOT 26/2/23]

…so…fun fact…the term paranoia comes from para…& anoia…some might tell you the para part comes from a latin term to do with shielding or guarding…but if you go back to the greek…where it could mean contrary to…but could also mean, more or less…alongside…& anoia…that one’s definitely of greek extraction…& means “extreme mental deficiency“…which happened to be something I found myself reminded of this morning…for reasons you are of course free to speculate upon…or not…before…during…after…or, indeed instead of…reading the rest of this lot…either way…etymology can be fun…like…learning…or science…science is pretty neat

An electric heat pump is an all-in-one heating and cooling unit, essentially an air-conditioner that runs in two directions. In the summer, it functions like a traditional A.C. unit, pumping heat out of the home and circulating cooled air inside. In the winter, it draws heat into the home. That might seem surprising, but it’s true. Even when it’s bitterly cold outside, there is still heat available. As it gets colder, heat pumps have to work harder, using more energy, to extract that heat.

But even in cold weather, electric heat pumps are more energy efficient than the gas or oil furnaces that heat many homes. Those furnaces generate heat by burning fuel. In theory, for every one unit of energy input, they can only produce one unit of energy output. In reality, even the most efficient gas-powered furnaces don’t convert 100 percent of their fuel into heat. Some is always lost in the conversion process.

Heat pumps, in contrast, don’t generate heat. They transfer it. That allows them to achieve more than 300 percent efficiency in some cases. […]

As they’ve grown in popularity, heat pumps have increasingly been the subject of misconception and, at times, misinformation. Fossil-fuel industry groups have been the origin of many exaggerated and misleading claims, including the assertion that they don’t work in regions with cold climates and are likely to fail in freezing weather.

While heat pumps do become less efficient in subzero temperatures, many models still operate close to normally in temperatures down to minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 24 Celsius. Some of the latest models are even more efficient, and many “cold” countries, like Norway, Sweden and Finland, are increasingly embracing heat pumps.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/22/climate/heat-pumps-extreme-cold.html

…seriously…it’s like…I dunno…a bunch of really smart people studied really hard for a long time & then thought about something until they had an idea worth testing…& some of those ideas were

A report published this week by the global engineering company Danfoss estimated that in the EU alone, excess heat was equal to 2,860 TWh a year, almost the same as the EU’s total energy demand for heat and hot water.

Surplus heat is released into the air from a wide range of sources, including supermarkets, transport networks, data centres and commercial buildings. Much of this can be captured and used via existing heat recovery technologies, such as heat pumps, plus more efficient air conditioners and manufacturing machinery according to the authors of the report. Other solutions include improved urban planning and district energy systems based on networks of renewable energy supplies for both heating and cooling.

Brian Vad Mathiesen, a professor in energy planning and renewable energy systems at Aalborg University, led the research cited in the report that builds on his team’s previous Heat Roadmap Europe projects.[…]

There was “huge, unharnessed potential” to the excess heat produced by heavy industry, such as chemical manufacturing, steel and cement production. In the EU, that amounts to more than 267 TWh a year, more than the combined heat generation of Germany, Poland and Sweden in 2021.

Data centres are also major consumers of electricity. In 2020, European data centres consumed about 3.5% of the region’s electricity demand, according to ReUseHeat, an EU project that explored barriers to urban heat recovery. The report highlights that the UK has an abundance of excess energy, including from 456 data centres. “That’s third most in the world, just behind Germany and the US,” explains Kim Fausing, the president and chief executive of Danfoss, who believes recycling heat is a crucial step towards a green transition.

“If businesses were to harness all the excess heat from these centres, the emissions savings and revenue from selling this heat would be highly significant. In Greater London, we have identified at least 648 eligible excess heat sources, including data centres, underground stations, supermarkets, wastewater treatment plants, and food production facilities. Why aren’t businesses and local government organisations using these?” said Fausing, adding that London’s excess heat equated to 9.5 TWh a year, roughly the amount of heat required to heat 790,000 households. “Reusing excess heat offers incredible opportunities for businesses throughout the UK to reduce their emissions, save money and make money. What are we waiting for?”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/23/recapturing-excess-heat-could-power-most-of-europe-say-experts

…like…not bad?

Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky — or “direct air capture,” as it is known by experts and scientists — is a bit like a time machine for climate change. It removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it deep underground, almost exactly the reverse of what humanity has been doing for centuries by burning fossil fuels. Its promise? That it can help run back the clock, undoing some of what we have done to the atmosphere and helping to return the planet to a cooler state.

The problem with direct air capture, however, has been that it takes energy — a lot of energy. Carbon dioxide only makes up 0.04 percent of ambient air, making the process of its extraction chemically and energy intensive. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2100 the world needs to remove between 100 and 1,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air to meet its most ambitious climate goals — or between 10 and 100 times China’s annual emissions. But if the energy powering that comes from fossil fuels, direct air capture starts to look less like a time machine than an accelerator: a way to emit even more CO2.

…ok…they can’t all be winners…but…bear with them

Now, however, a company is working to combine direct air capture with a relatively untapped source of energy: Heat from Earth’s crust. Fervo Energy, a geothermal company headquartered in Houston, announced on Thursday that it will design and engineer the first purpose-built geothermal and direct air capture plant. With the help of a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the company hopes to have a pilot facility online in 3 to 5 years.

If it works, it will be a way to produce carbon-free electricity, while reducing CO2 in the atmosphere at the same time. In short, a win-win for the climate.

…pretty sure that sounds plenty cool even if you aren’t a nerd…& the catch doesn’t even seem like it should be a deal-breaker

“You have to have your energy from a carbon-free source” for direct air capture to make sense, said Timothy Latimer, the CEO of Fervo Energy. “Geothermal is a great match.”
[…]
Geothermal wells don’t, of course, get anywhere close to Earth’s core, but a geothermal well drilled just 1 to 2 miles into hot rocks below the surface can reach temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees. Water is pumped into the well, heated and returned to the surface, where it can be converted into steam and electricity.

Even after generating electricity, most geothermal plants have a lot of waste heat — often clocking in around 212 degrees. And conveniently, that happens to be the exact temperature needed to pull carbon dioxide out of an air filter and bury it underground.

Hélène Pilorgé, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania who studies carbon dioxide removal, says that one of the main ways to pull CO2 out of the air is known as the “solid sorbent” method. Big fans draw air into a box with an air filter; the air filter is then heated to around 212 degrees to remove the CO2 for burial. That high temperature “fits well with the energy that geothermal can provide,” Pilorgé said.
[…]
According to one study co-authored by Pilorgé, if air capture were combined with all of the geothermal plants currently in the United States, the country could suck up around 12.8 million tons of carbon dioxide every year.
[…]
There is also much more funding available for direct air capture than there is for geothermal alone. The Energy Department is offering up to $74 million for demonstration projects of new geothermal technologies but a whopping $3.5 billion to establish regional hubs for direct air capture. Geothermal has often been called the “forgotten renewable” — useful, but not as sexy or appealing as solar or wind.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/02/23/geothermal-direct-air-capture-fervo/

…so

A Guardian analysis of data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by non-profit groups that track chemical accidents in the US shows that accidental releases – be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills – are happening consistently across the country.

By one estimate these incidents are occurring, on average, every two days.
[…]
In the first seven weeks of 2023 alone, there were more than 30 incidents recorded by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, roughly one every day and a half. Last year the coalition recorded 188, up from 177 in 2021. The group has tallied more than 470 incidents since it started counting in April 2020.
[…]
The precise number of hazardous chemical incidents is hard to determine because the US has multiple agencies involved in response, but the EPA told the Guardian that over the past 10 years, the agency has “performed an average of 235 emergency response actions per year, including responses to discharges of hazardous chemicals or oil”. The agency said it employs roughly 250 people devoted to the EPA’s emergency response and removal program.
[…]
The vast majority of incidents, however, occur at the thousands of facilities around the country where dangerous chemicals are used and stored.

“What happened in East Palestine, this is a regular occurrence for communities living adjacent to chemical plants,” said Stanislaus. “They live in daily fear of an accident.”

In all, roughly 200 million people are at regular risk, with many of them people of color, or otherwise disadvantaged communities, he said.
[…]
Accident rates are particularly high for petroleum and coal manufacturing and chemical manufacturing facilities, according to the EPA. The most accidents logged were in Texas, followed by Louisiana and California.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/25/revealed-us-chemical-accidents-one-every-two-days-average

…so we’re getting right on that, then?

In October, Kentucky’s attorney general ordered some of the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms to turn over piles of documents that had the word “climate” or “environmental” in them. The bankers went to court to fight him.

Like a growing number of states, Kentucky has a new type of law on the books targeting financial institutions that “boycott” companies that don’t get past some kind of an E.S.G. screening. What the states mean by boycott isn’t always clear.

E.S.G. — which refers to environmental, social and governance standards — has become a point of contention for red-state legislators defending the fossil fuel industries that employ their residents.

There’s just one problem with this fledgling anti-E.S.G. movement: To act and invest in a state’s best interest ought to mean taking every risk into account, including climate change. And lawsuits like the one in Kentucky are a reminder of the fact that few of us have a good grip on how to properly define risk.
[…]
In October, [Daniel Cameron, the state attorney general] issued subpoenas and civil investigative demands. He targeted Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. His office announced that it planned to examine “documents relating to the companies’ involvement with the United Nations’ Net-Zero Banking Alliance.” The information requested, the office said, “centers on suspected financial discrimination against companies that do not align with the United Nations’ ‘net-zero’ climate agenda.”
[…]
It would be easy to dismiss this mudslinging as a kind of political sideshow. No one close to this — literally nobody — wanted to have a substantive conversation about the investing principles at issue.

The roster of no-commenters included not just the bankers and the state attorney general but also the state treasurer and endowment manager at the University of Louisville, a public institution. On Friday, the University of Kentucky, another public institution, said in a statement that it was reviewing its holdings “to determine what next actions, if any, it is required to take under the law.”

…if your head hurts…it’s not you…the purpose of the net-zero thing is explicitly to mitigate the effects of a massive problem…but they have a massive problem with the idea that might translate into a preference for companies that…you’ll never guess…aren’t predicated entirely on a principle of making it worse because it’s always paid so well…almost like…what they call those things…market forces? …nah…can’t be those…capitalism would never hurt the profit margin of a fossil fuel based business model…it’d be…unnatural

But as the law and its loophole allow, it is those very investment returns, and the proper stewardship of state money generally, that are of primary concern when you are a government employee who is duty bound to act in the best interest of the people you serve. Any process that supports such actions is well worth enacting.

So what is E.S.G., anyway? As investors rename their firms and their funds in a race to ride the E.S.G. wave, cynics see the debate over the term’s definition as degenerating into everyone seeing gibberish. Because funds can define E.S.G. nearly any way they want, they have come to resemble an extra-strange goulash. Sometimes, these new or newly rebranded operations are just elegantly simple greenwashing and nothing more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/your-money/anti-esg-investing-kentucky.html

…elegant simplicity…it’s not always what’s called for

Phoenix Community Capital established itself last year as a cryptocurrency project and investment scheme, which it said at one point was valued at $800m (£665m). It was a sponsor of one [all-party parliamentary group], and its co-founder, Luke Sullivan, spoke at an event for a second APPG , as well as appearing as a panellist for events hosted by peers in parliament.

However, the company appears to have vanished in September last year, with its website going offline and the investment portfolios, known as “nests”, becoming inaccessible to an estimated 8,000 investors after that date.
[…]
Some of the firm’s assets and its name appear to have been sold to a new company run by an individual called “Dan”, who has told investors it has no obligation towards them, but that it would still try to make them some returns.

Asked what had happened to the company and its investments, Sullivan said he would respond if the Guardian flew to the Philippines to discuss it further. He criticised the Guardian for making “a number of factual errors” and said he was not being allowed an opportunity to “clarify the real facts”, and then said he could not respond to a further request for comment.

The company had promoted itself online by referring to its links to the House of Lords, APPGs and parliamentarians.

The situation is likely to fuel concerns about the use of parliament and the APPG system by companies to lend themselves prestige and access to politicians without much scrutiny.
[…]
It also shines a light on the rise of lobbying of MPs and peers by the crypto sector as the government considers the case to bring it under regulation. The sector is largely unregulated, and the Financial Conduct Authority has repeatedly warned investors that they risk losing all of their money.
[…]
The founders of Phoenix Community Capital, including Sullivan, who was based in the UK, appear to have left the company in September and a now-deleted message on its Twitter feed said it was under new management. Some investors claim to have lost more than $100,000 each.

The new incarnation of the company, controlled by “Dan”, released a message on an internet forum in October last year saying that around 1,000 investors had made positive returns totalling around $57m, while around 7,400 were in the red to the tune of $87m.
[…]
Docherty-Hughes said: “I have spoken on several occasions in the house and elsewhere about the pernicious use of opaque funding in our politics, and the loopholes that still exist which allow individuals and companies to influence the political process without requisite scrutiny. It has been clear to me for some time that APPGs are one such back door that has been left wide open, giving access and privileges around parliament to people who really don’t deserve it.

“[…] The vast majority of APPGs, including those I am a member of, would have nothing to fear from tighter regulation that ensured transparency and accountability in the process of funding this vital work.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/23/crypto-firm-with-links-to-parliamentary-groups-appears-to-have-vanished

…hmmm…leaving aside the happy coincidence that dan is a recently popular acronym for…what was it again…”do anything now”, iirc…that sounds like no amount of supposed elegance should have been able to get that kind of simply fraudulent bit of snake oil peddling up close & personal with “the mother of parliaments”…I mean…your westminster elite is better than that, right? …elite…the clue is in the name…right?

A secretive organisation accused of collaborating with far-right activists has been operating out of the House of Lords for more than a decade, a cache of leaked documents suggests.

The organisation, called the New Issues Group (NIG), includes the former Ukip leader Malcolm Pearson and the Tory former deputy speaker of the House of Lords Baroness Cox.
[…]
Confirming the group’s existence, Cox denied that the NIG was anti-Muslim, saying it could “certainly not” be described in such a way.

Instead, she said, it was a “meeting of people who support the aims of my bill”, referring to a private member’s bill, first introduced in 2011, which aims to protect Muslim women in Britain from sharia law. “I have strong support from Muslim women,” she added.

…seems like the folks at hope not hate might…differ?

One way the documents indicate that the group may have attempted to influence parliament was through writing questions to be asked in the Lords. Minutes of a November 2013 meeting indicate that Anne Marie Waters – who in 2016 set up the UK branch of the anti-Islam group Pegida with Tommy Robinson – “was asked if she would help draft a question for Caroline Cox to ask in the Lords”. Cox did not comment when asked about the apparent involvement of Waters.
[…]
Another member of the NIG was Alan Craig, a former Ukip spokesperson who launched the far-right group Hearts of Oak in 2020. Its online “guests” include Tommy Robinson, founder of the anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL). Craig denied he was far-right, describing himself a “social conservative by conviction”.

Among the documents is a 2015 “memorandum” created by another NIG member, Magnus Nielsen – a known anti-Muslim activist with links to the EDL – which outlined a proposal to launch a street protest organisation.

…but…for years…this stuff stuck below the radar…or at least these people’s blushes were spared…until

Founded in 2012, the group met as recently as January this year. Its existence emerged after Pearson sent an email to 235 people but – instead of bcc-ing them – accidentally sent it so that everyone could see the entire list.

Among an array of Conservative party MPs, aristocrats, bishops, businessmen and journalists were high-profile far-right figures including Geert Wilders from the Netherlands, Tommy Robinson and US anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller, who was banned from entering the UK in 2013.

Pearson’s email stated: “Islam is a vast subject. But if we try to discuss it in public, we are accused of Islamophobia. Our MPs are too frightened of the growing Muslim vote to discuss it. Several of my fellow peers jeer when I raise it in the Lords.”

When asked about the email, Pearson said it was about “Islamism, political Islam and radical Islam, which I think we should be allowed to discuss without being labelled Islamophobic”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/25/house-of-lords-worked-with-far-right

…he’d like it to be known that trying to discuss in private things which, if discussed in public, would result in accusations of islamophobia…likely on account of it being a discussion specifically with people whose islamaphobic credentials are well-established…is…well it certainly isn’t islamaphobic…perish the thought…but…just for fun…imagine if, say, someone in that situation could sue the paper for “defamation per se”?

Florida has introduced the Empower Bigots Act, HB991.

It would classify accusations that someone engaged in discrimination as defamation per se with $35k minimum in damages. If it involves LGBTQ people and someone's beliefs, truth is no defense.

This is absolutely chilling. pic.twitter.com/sTjxNd255h

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) February 22, 2023

It gets even worse, it would presume anonymous sources are presumptively false. This would limit the ability of journalists to cover issues without fear of liability for using anonymous sources. This would silence journalists and those targeted by those in power. pic.twitter.com/cyIvkPKujz

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) February 22, 2023

This isn't the first time libel laws have been used to silence minority groups. Alabama tried to use libel to silence civil rights leaders and journalists. The case resulted in NY Times v Sullivan. Florida wants to try again to silence minority groups.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) February 22, 2023

This is so contradictory on its face

If an allegation is defamation per se, then it doesn't need to be proven true to be defamation per se. So the next parts about proving the truth of the allegation aren't controlling.

Allegations as defamation per se are an absolute wild mess https://t.co/WoNnywioBQ

— Johnny (@johnnyzcz) February 22, 2023

You ever say something so profound that the legislature filed a bill to make your statement actionable?

I have.

"(2) An allegation that the plaintiff has discriminated against another person or group because of their race…constitutes defamation per se." https://t.co/6AuTuvMJzW

— Stephen Hunter Johnson (#flyeaglesfly #afa) (@stephenhjohnson) February 22, 2023

…so…yeah…that’s apparently where we’re at…so…if when empty greene mentioned divorce the other day part of you felt like, sure, those were papers you’d probably sign…if the whole notion wasn’t patently absurd & entirely unworkable to the point of seeming like pretty much pure grandstandin…oh…wait

In its most familiar form, the paradox for which the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea is best known can be summarized like this: You can never actually reach your destination.

After all, in order to get there, you have to first travel halfway there. So off you march, reaching the halfway point. Once you arrive at that point, you’re in essence starting a new journey. To complete that journey, you have to first travel half of the new, shorter distance. So you do. Now you arrive at the new halfway point (three-quarters of the way from the initial starting point), and again start a new trip; you now have to travel half of the new distance to your goal. And, once you get there, you still have half of the remaining distance to go. The journey begins again.
[…]
Call it Zeno’s politics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/24/zenos-politics-useful-lens-this-weird-moment/

…yeah…so…anyway…that was totally exactly what you think it was

You can probably tell, from the substance of Greene’s comments, that this “national divorce” is more paranoid fantasy than serious proposal. Even so, it rests on a set of ideas and tropes that are in wide circulation in the public at large.

Let’s start with the idea that individual states constitute singular political communities, meaning that there is a real distinction between Americans who live in “big states” versus “small states,” between the residents of Montana and those of Massachusetts. There’s also the idea that partisan divides between states represent fundamental differences of culture and interest. And then there’s the idea, underneath all this, that states are, or ought to be, the fundamental unit of representation in the American political system.

Taken together, those ideas make a “national divorce” seem, if not likely, then at least plausible. But there’s a problem. States are not actually singular political communities. There are partisan divides between states, even large ones, but they do not represent fundamental differences of culture and interest. And although states play an important role in the American political system, they are not the autonomous, nearly independent units of either Representative Greene’s imagination or the folk civics that shapes political understanding for tens of millions of Americans.
[…]
But let’s say you could split each state into its constituent interests, so that majorities would not form against it. Well, then, Madison says, you would find yourself in the same situation as before: “In the smallest of the fragments, there would soon be added to previous sources of discord a manufacturing and an agricultural class, with the difficulty experienced in adjusting their relative interests, in the regulation of foreign commerce if any, or if none in equalizing the burden of internal improvement and of taxation within them.”

No matter how small you go, in other words, you run into the simple fact that there’s no such thing as a truly homogeneous political community. There will always be differences of belief and interest, and the only way to deal with them in a representative, republican government is through deliberation and majority rule.

What was true in the 18th and 19th centuries is true now. A “national divorce” is possible only if the states represent singular political communities. But they don’t. A conservative, deep “red” state like Oklahoma still has liberal, “blue” cities and suburbs with conflicting interests. If you tried to separate conservative rural areas from liberal urban ones, you’d quickly find that within those subdivisions lie profound political differences among both individual people and groups of people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/opinion/marjorie-taylor-greene-national-divorce.html

…but…even if you get the part where it’s of a piece with this shit

Breathtaking control of viewpoint and content throughout all academic activity in the entire Florida system. All colleges and universities are forbidden to spend any money to fund pedagogy, programming, or activities that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion.” pic.twitter.com/sWjei9DNE8

— Julian Davis Mortenson (@jdmortenson) February 24, 2023

…there’s still a decent chance you might have come up short of how entirely fucked up it was…or she is…or…just…read the thread

If you were taught that "states' rights" caused a Civil War…
Or wondered why people shed white tears over monuments of mustachioed un-American traitors…
Or seen a Confederate flag at an insurrection

Well, you can thank one family of white supremacist nepo babies

A thread

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) February 22, 2023

…yeah…he’s still pretty good with those…so…help yourselves to another

DeSantis' anti-CRT law isn't just about Black history. It whitewashes Hispanic history, European history, California history. US history & Fla. history

How?

Well, a Black man did all of that. He also has a legitimate claim to another title:

The first African American

A thread

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) February 11, 2023

…meanwhile…back in the realm of fragile egos & other things that are less resilient than advertised

$8 a month gets you an edit button.

$44 billion gets you a new algorithm to makes sure everybody sees your tweets. pic.twitter.com/5g2JtO5gNJ

— Isiah Whitlock Jr. (@IsiahWhitlockJr) February 15, 2023

…ever wondered what the overhead looks like for wedging “AI” into every-damn-thing?

Powering many of these applications is a roughly $10,000 chip that’s become one of the most critical tools in the artificial intelligence industry: The Nvidia A100.

The A100 has become the “workhorse” for artificial intelligence professionals at the moment, said Nathan Benaich, an investor who publishes a newsletter and report covering the AI industry, including a partial list of supercomputers using A100s. Nvidia takes 95% of the market for graphics processors that can be used for machine learning, according to New Street Research.
[…]
Big companies or startups working on software like chatbots and image generators require hundreds or thousands of Nvidia’s chips, and either purchase them on their own or secure access to the computers from a cloud provider.

Hundreds of GPUsare required to train artificial intelligence models, like large language models. The chips need to be powerful enough to crunch terabytes of data quickly to recognize patterns. After that, GPUs like the A100 are also needed for “inference,” or using the model to generate text, make predictions, or identify objects inside photos.
[…]
“A year ago we had 32 A100s,” Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque wrote on Twitter in January. “Dream big and stack moar GPUs kids. Brrr.” Stability AI is the company that helped develop Stable Diffusion, an image generator that drew attention last fall, and reportedly has a valuation of over $1 billion.

Now, Stability AI has access to over 5,400 A100 GPUs, according to one estimate from the State of AI report, which charts and tracks which companies and universities have the largest collection of A100 GPUs — although it doesn’t include cloud providers, which don’t publish their numbers publicly.
[…]
These GPUs aren’t cheap. In addition to a single A100 on a card that can be slotted into an existing server, many data centers use a system that includes eight A100 GPUs working together.

This system, Nvidia’s DGX A100, has a suggested price of nearly $200,000, although it comes with the chips needed. On Wednesday, Nvidia said it would sell cloud access to DGX systems directly, which will likely reduce the entry cost for tinkerers and researchers.

For example, an estimate from New Street Research found that the OpenAI-based ChatGPT model inside Bing’s search could require 8 GPUs to deliver a response to a question in less than one second.

At that rate, Microsoft would need over 20,000 8-GPU servers just to deploy the model in Bing to everyone, suggesting Microsoft’s feature could cost $4 billion in infrastructure spending.

…suddenly throwing $10billion at integrating this stuff doesn’t sound like it buys you as much as you’d think…imagine if bing was actually popular

“If you’re from Microsoft, and you want to scale that, at the scale of Bing, that’s maybe $4 billion. If you want to scale at the scale of Google, which serves 8 or 9 billion queries every day, you actually need to spend $80 billion on DGXs.” said Antoine Chkaiban, a technology analyst at New Street Research. “The numbers we came up with are huge. But they’re simply the reflection of the fact that every single user taking to such a large language model requires a massive supercomputer while they’re using it.”

The latest version of Stable Diffusion, an image generator, was trained on 256 A100 GPUs, or 32 machines with 8 A100s each, according to information online posted by Stability AI, totaling 200,000 compute hours.

At the market price, training the model alone cost $600,000, Stability AI CEO Mostaque said on Twitter, suggesting in a tweet exchange the price was unusually inexpensive compared to rivals. That doesn’t count the cost of “inference,” or deploying the model.

…it’s important to keep these things in perspective

Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said in an interview with CNBC’s Katie Tarasov that the company’s products are actually inexpensive for the amount of computation that these kinds of models need.
[…]
Huang said that Nvidia’s GPUs allow startups to train models for a much lower cost than if they used a traditional computer processor.

“Now you could build something like a large language model, like a GPT, for something like $10, $20 million,” Huang said. “That’s really, really affordable.”
[…]
The A100 also has the distinction of being one of only a few chips to have export controls placed on it because of national defense reasons. Last fall, Nvidia said in an SEC filing that the U.S. government imposed a license requirement barring the export of the A100 and the H100 to China, Hong Kong, and Russia.

The fiercest competition for the A100 may be its successor. The A100 was first introduced in 2020, an eternity ago in chip cycles. The H100, introduced in 2022, is starting to be produced in volume — in fact, Nvidia recorded more revenue from H100 chips in the quarter ending in January than the A100, it said on Wednesday, although the H100 is more expensive per unit.

The H100, Nvidia says, is the first one of its data center GPUs to be optimized for transformers, an increasingly important technique that many of the latest and top AI applications use. Nvidia said on Wednesday that it wants to make AI training over 1 million percent faster. That could mean that, eventually, AI companies wouldn’t need so many Nvidia chips.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/meet-10000-nvidia-chip-powering-race-rcna72155

…or…there’ll be millions of the fucking things…who knows…maybe by then they’ll want a divorce?