Best I can offer is a Canadian diesel electric hybrid.

The generation over generation computing power of large AI systems is pretty much doubling each generation as we go from Ada to Blackwell to Vera Rubin. Also software improvements have made old GPUs way more efficient. NVIDIA says the H100 us now 40% faster than it was new because of the software enhancements made. The losses they’re taking get smaller every day as the tech progresses.

Old GPU supplies are just about as constrained as the new ones too. You can get like 50 cents on the dollar for a 3-year old H200, and it’s not the hyperscalers buying them. Even DGX1 systems are hard to come by. Tons of companies are buying up the capacity that’s essentially worthless to the hyperscalers.

The hyperscalers aren’t getting rid of old capacity on the same cycle as they used to anymore either. 6 year old A100s are still all over Azure/AWS since the demand is still so high and stocks are so constrained. That’s a huge TCO win for the investment.

If you know what you’re doing and you know what good patterns look like then AI is a very good way to take some shortcuts and not have to write all the code yourself. It also keeps getting better. This is a super unpopular opinion on Lemmy, but I’ve been doing this job for 25 years and AI has only sped it up.

On the other end of vibe coding you have people who would never touch a compiler in their life if it wasn’t for AI, who are building practical, useful things in the real world. I think because Lemmy is so full of tech people that we often forget the tech serves larger purposes than just having nice code.

I think it’s also helpful to remember that short of an entire societal collapse we will never stop using these tools and they will only get better. The monolithic systems that are in place running the world are not going to change anytime soon. Even if we encounter a major correction of some sort these tools will only come back better and cheaper. You will never get everyone in the world to agree on regulation and at least one nation will march forward with progress unabated. You can hate the tech companies, the governments, the rich, the stupid, the right wing, the left wing, it doesn’t matter. We are locked on a course.

Oh. My. God. You can’t go anywhere without the raw rocks people spreading their bullshit. There’s a reason we started pasteurizing rocks and I can’t believe we’re still debating it 180 years later. Fucking right wing media!