A shortage of the kind of advanced chips that are the lifeblood of new generative AI systems has set off a race to lock down computing power and find workarounds. The graphics chips, or GPUs, used for AI are almost all made by Nvidia. But the boom in demand for them has far outpaced supply with the viral success of ChatGPT, a chatbot that is able to respond to questions in humanlike ways.
"Because there is a shortage, it's about who you know," said Sharon Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Lamini, a startup that helps companies build AI models like chatbots. "It's like toilet paper during the pan demic." That situation has restricted the processing power that cloud-service providers like Amazon.com and Microsoft can offer to clients such as OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. AI developers need the server capacity to develop and operate their increasingly complex models and help other companies build AI services.
Even the most connected tech entrepreneurs in the world are struggling to secure capacity. During a May 16 congressional hearing on AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it would be better if fewer people used ChatGPT because of the processor bottleneck.
"GPUs at this point are considerably harder to get than drugs," Elon Musk told The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on May 23.
Being Musk has its perks, though. Earlier this year, startups clamoring for Oracle computing capacity were abruptly told that a buyer had snapped up much of Oracle's spare server space, people familiar with the matter said. The buyer, the startups were told, was Musk, who is building his own OpenAI rival called X.AI, the people said.
This story is from the May 30, 2023 edition of Mint Mumbai.
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This story is from the May 30, 2023 edition of Mint Mumbai.
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