I think AI research on large models is quite different to the kind of research meant by this post, because it requires large amounts of compute, which is physical (though I guess not exactly a product)
Similarly biotech research or high energy physics research is really expensive, and mostly because of physical world stuff
Based on vaguely remembered hearsay, my heuristic has been that the large AI labs like DeepMind and OpenAI spend roughly as much on compute as they do on people, which would make for a ~2x increase in costs. Googling around doesn’t immediately get me any great sources, although this page says “Cloud computing services are a major cost for OpenAI, which spent $7.9 million on cloud computing in the 2017 tax year, or about a quarter of its total functional expenses for that year”.
I’d be curious to get a better estimate, if anyone knows anything relevant.
I think AI research on large models is quite different to the kind of research meant by this post, because it requires large amounts of compute, which is physical (though I guess not exactly a product)
Similarly biotech research or high energy physics research is really expensive, and mostly because of physical world stuff
Based on vaguely remembered hearsay, my heuristic has been that the large AI labs like DeepMind and OpenAI spend roughly as much on compute as they do on people, which would make for a ~2x increase in costs. Googling around doesn’t immediately get me any great sources, although this page says “Cloud computing services are a major cost for OpenAI, which spent $7.9 million on cloud computing in the 2017 tax year, or about a quarter of its total functional expenses for that year”.
I’d be curious to get a better estimate, if anyone knows anything relevant.