I appreciate the âWe avoid derailment byâŚâ sections â I think some forecasts have implicitly overly relied on a âbusiness as usualâ frame, and itâs worth thinking about derailment.
In short, we expect the typical outcome of an invasion is that TSMCâs output going to AGI will be drastically reduced for many years. This will slow transformative AGI timelines by years, as TSMC is the #1 producer of advanced semiconductor chips and makes 100% of advanced AI chips
TSMC is obviously a market leader, but it seems weird to assume that TAI is infeasible without them? Samsung got to 3nm before TSMC, and that headline is misleading (e.g. they reportedly had poor yields, and the entire labeling system is kind of made up) but my impression is that Samsung is only ~1 generation behind and Intel ~2?
If you had written your report even one year ago you wouldnât have been able to say that TSMC was responsible for cutting edge GPUs, as Nvidia was using Samsung, right?
I canât tell how much of your probability mass comes from TSMC in particular versus thinking that e.g. a Taiwan invasion will likely escalate to a global conflict, but if itâs coming from the former, it seems like this factor is overemphasized.
Thanks! We agree that a common mistake by forecasters is to equate low probability of derailment with negligible probability of derailment. The future is hard to predict, and we think itâs worth taking tail risks seriously.
it seems weird to assume that TAI is infeasible without [TSMC]?
We do not assume TAI is infeasible without TSMC. That would be a terrible reasoning error, and I apologize for giving you that impression.
What we assume is that losing TSMC would likely delay TAI by a handful of years, as it would take:
Time for NVIDIA to bid on capacity from Samsung
Time for Samsung to figure out to what extent it could get out of prior contracted commitments
Time for NVIDIA and Samsung engineers to retune GPU designs for Samsungâs fab design rules
Time to manufacture the masks and put the GPUs into production
Time to iron out early manufacturing and yield issues
Time to build new fabs to absorb the tsunami of demand from TSMC customers (like Apple) and scale up to NVIDIAâs original TSMC volumes
And on top of this, there would massive geopolitical uncertainty that would slow things like investments into new fabs, as companies wonder whether the conflict will escalate or evaporate (both of which massively change the investment case).
What this might look like in reality will also depend on how close we are to transformative AGI.
Two example scenarios:
Today, for example, NVIDIA is probably not going to outbid Apple (Apple makes ~$10B in PROFIT per month, which would evaporate if they were starved of chips).
Or, imagine itâs 2035 and NVIDIA is worth $10T and the semiconductor industry has been building fabs left and right to fuel the impending AGI boom. In such a world, where NVIDIA is the worldâs biggest chip designer, it may already dominate manufacturing on both Samsung and TSMC, meaning that if TSMC goes down, it cannot shift production to Samsungâbecause it already has production on Samsung.
In any case, we fully agree TAI is feasible without TSMC. But we think losing TSMC delays things by a few years, and if TAI is likely to come in the final 10 or 5 years of this period, then a few years might have a 50â50 shot of delaying things beyond 2043.
Cool, I agree that, if most your probability mass is in the final few years before 2043, then a couple year delay is likely to push you over the 2043 deadline.
I appreciate the âWe avoid derailment byâŚâ sections â I think some forecasts have implicitly overly relied on a âbusiness as usualâ frame, and itâs worth thinking about derailment.
TSMC is obviously a market leader, but it seems weird to assume that TAI is infeasible without them? Samsung got to 3nm before TSMC, and that headline is misleading (e.g. they reportedly had poor yields, and the entire labeling system is kind of made up) but my impression is that Samsung is only ~1 generation behind and Intel ~2?
If you had written your report even one year ago you wouldnât have been able to say that TSMC was responsible for cutting edge GPUs, as Nvidia was using Samsung, right?
I canât tell how much of your probability mass comes from TSMC in particular versus thinking that e.g. a Taiwan invasion will likely escalate to a global conflict, but if itâs coming from the former, it seems like this factor is overemphasized.
Thanks! We agree that a common mistake by forecasters is to equate low probability of derailment with negligible probability of derailment. The future is hard to predict, and we think itâs worth taking tail risks seriously.
We do not assume TAI is infeasible without TSMC. That would be a terrible reasoning error, and I apologize for giving you that impression.
What we assume is that losing TSMC would likely delay TAI by a handful of years, as it would take:
Time for NVIDIA to bid on capacity from Samsung
Time for Samsung to figure out to what extent it could get out of prior contracted commitments
Time for NVIDIA and Samsung engineers to retune GPU designs for Samsungâs fab design rules
Time to manufacture the masks and put the GPUs into production
Time to iron out early manufacturing and yield issues
Time to build new fabs to absorb the tsunami of demand from TSMC customers (like Apple) and scale up to NVIDIAâs original TSMC volumes
And on top of this, there would massive geopolitical uncertainty that would slow things like investments into new fabs, as companies wonder whether the conflict will escalate or evaporate (both of which massively change the investment case).
What this might look like in reality will also depend on how close we are to transformative AGI.
Two example scenarios:
Today, for example, NVIDIA is probably not going to outbid Apple (Apple makes ~$10B in PROFIT per month, which would evaporate if they were starved of chips).
Or, imagine itâs 2035 and NVIDIA is worth $10T and the semiconductor industry has been building fabs left and right to fuel the impending AGI boom. In such a world, where NVIDIA is the worldâs biggest chip designer, it may already dominate manufacturing on both Samsung and TSMC, meaning that if TSMC goes down, it cannot shift production to Samsungâbecause it already has production on Samsung.
In any case, we fully agree TAI is feasible without TSMC. But we think losing TSMC delays things by a few years, and if TAI is likely to come in the final 10 or 5 years of this period, then a few years might have a 50â50 shot of delaying things beyond 2043.
Cool, I agree that, if most your probability mass is in the final few years before 2043, then a couple year delay is likely to push you over the 2043 deadline.