> Make a compute intensive process a necessity (that's where AI comes in) and buy 100% of all compute capacity, eventually buying up all the fabs and locking everyone out of acceptable general purpose computing, forced to move everything to the cloud
This is overly dramatic and pointing that out is necessary because this could cause someone else, even if not you, tremendous anxiety and pessimism about the future: None of which is good for your health.
First of all, no one's been forcing anyone to use AI or "move everything to the cloud". AI is tremendous leverage. It's exactly as useful as a jet or FSD is for commuting. It expedites significantly intelligence-related tasks. No one is forcing anyone to use AI. However, just like a person who owns a jet gets to a place faster than a person without, or a FSD allows you to get work done instead of staring at other cars, a person using AI will get their tasks done quicker than a person without. But that doesn't force a necessity.
Moving "everything" to the cloud is also not going to be financially smart. Companies like Apple, Google, Cloudflare, etc are aggressively moving compute to the edge, locally on device. This increases your own chances of running services locally on device because the device manufacturers will build their hardware to match the demand.
Second, compute capacity has always been elastic. Supply constraints have forever been an issue and that's how markets work. Supply gets constrained, suppliers react to demand, market reaches equilibrium.
In 1996, I had a real tough time getting a T1 line to my office. By 1998, it was no longer an issue. By 2000 there was more fiber than we knew what to do with.
I had a real tough time hiring good, quality engineers 2020 through 2024. That was a constraint in the supply. The market reacted and now there are a lot more good, quality engineers.
Yes, there's a severe constraint now but the market is going to respond and we will have a very different situation in 2030.
Capitalism works. It's not always roses though and not everyone benefits all the time.
This is overly dramatic and pointing that out is necessary because this could cause someone else, even if not you, tremendous anxiety and pessimism about the future: None of which is good for your health.
First of all, no one's been forcing anyone to use AI or "move everything to the cloud". AI is tremendous leverage. It's exactly as useful as a jet or FSD is for commuting. It expedites significantly intelligence-related tasks. No one is forcing anyone to use AI. However, just like a person who owns a jet gets to a place faster than a person without, or a FSD allows you to get work done instead of staring at other cars, a person using AI will get their tasks done quicker than a person without. But that doesn't force a necessity.
Moving "everything" to the cloud is also not going to be financially smart. Companies like Apple, Google, Cloudflare, etc are aggressively moving compute to the edge, locally on device. This increases your own chances of running services locally on device because the device manufacturers will build their hardware to match the demand.
Second, compute capacity has always been elastic. Supply constraints have forever been an issue and that's how markets work. Supply gets constrained, suppliers react to demand, market reaches equilibrium.
In 1996, I had a real tough time getting a T1 line to my office. By 1998, it was no longer an issue. By 2000 there was more fiber than we knew what to do with.
I had a real tough time hiring good, quality engineers 2020 through 2024. That was a constraint in the supply. The market reacted and now there are a lot more good, quality engineers.
Yes, there's a severe constraint now but the market is going to respond and we will have a very different situation in 2030.
Capitalism works. It's not always roses though and not everyone benefits all the time.