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 it’s 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 Samsung’s 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 NVIDIA’s 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 it’s 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 world’s biggest chip designer, it may already dominate manufacturing on both Samsung and TSMC, meaning that if TSMC goes down, it cannot shift production to Samsung—because 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 50⁄50 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.
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 it’s 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 Samsung’s 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 NVIDIA’s 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 it’s 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 world’s biggest chip designer, it may already dominate manufacturing on both Samsung and TSMC, meaning that if TSMC goes down, it cannot shift production to Samsung—because 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 50⁄50 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.