this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Sadly no. AI hardware does not relies on the same fundamentals as consumer hardware.
Long story short AI stuff use Float 4 or 8 because accuracy is not a factor. Games or physics simulation use Float 32 or 64.
I'm pretty sure the thing about datatypes is wrong. From experience programming shaders the most typical float values were 4 bytes. The physics simulations are run on cpus typically, not gpus, but for graphics processing of all kinds, smaller floats are used. The conclusion is right though.
Some people already replied but I would like to add that even if float type where the right one.
AI dedicated hardware doesn't bundle stuff you usually espect from a gpu like dedicated encoder and decoders.
4 bytes not 4 bits, so 32 bits. You can't do graphics on 4 bits, that's way too small.
Good catch, thanks
But you can use 4bits neural networks.
Yeah, even the Game&Watch was 8-bit
The "GPUs" used in these AI datacentres can't even do graphics anymore. They're now sloppy approximate matrix math machines.
SAS hard drives and server ECC ram incoming!
That doesn't really matter. Both AI hardware and consumer hardware use the same underlying materials and components. When supply is low due to AI companies hoarding compute, the prices for all the components rise.