More signs that xAI might be giving up on the AGI race. xAI let Cursor train a model on Colossus 2, gave the entire Colossus1 to Anthropic, and is now giving compute in Colossus2 to Anthropic as well.
I don't see a scenario where it really makes sense to be a frontier lab long term. Eventually model quality will plateau then you distill and get 90% for 10% or less cost.
Why is xAI giving up their advantage? Is this a signal that their frontier model improvements are plateauing and decided there is no value in hoarding all their compute?
Musk's goal with X.ai from the start seems to have been primarily to compete with OpenAI, and given that Grok itself isn't doing that (not even mentioned in competitive benchmark tables), and his data centers are therefore mostly sitting idle, this deal with Anthropic helps him achieve that goal by helping OpenAI's #1 competitor.
Note how the initial deal was only for the older Colossus #1 data center, and now after losing his lawsuit against OpenAI the Anthropic deal has been expanded to Colossus #2 also. Coincidence?
I think that's the datacenter with the gas turbine generators that operate without permits because they're "portable." Data centers have tremendous externalities but colossus is a particularly nasty offender, and not just due its size.
Space compute isn't real though, it's just a scheme to pump the value of SpaceX before IPO by associating it with AI. It's really hard to cool things in space, because there's no matter to transfer the heat away. All you've got is radiative cooling, and that's really really slow.
I think its a mix of both of your first two points. He has hinted that he will be producing chips for Tesla and SpaceX here in the US in the future, so there will be a time where Elon will have every critical component we need for Tesla and SpaceX here in the US and not overseas, and fully in-house. Once he does this, nothing stops him from selling components. He's also insanely efficient at standing up data centers, so I would not be surprised if he gets enlisted by someone like Anthropic to setup infrastructure for him.
Interesting that nobody mentioned SAR in this thread, yet.
SAR benefits from space compute by reducing the strain on downlinks (pre-process, detect in space). A large-ish (think 6k sat) constellation of much bigger sats (2-2,5 ton) than current Starlink sats can run inference on board, distribute load to nearby sats, and enable full round-the-clock surveillance of the whole world.
The nominal compute capacity is in ballpark range of a modern AI data center, but it's only about 20% used on average due to duty cycles. An indestructible, global eye.
The big Starship launch vehicle is perfect platform to bring them into orbit, can maybe bring 40 at a time into orbit, so 150 launches for 6k. Maybe even fewer sats are needed, depends mostly on electrical efficiency of the components.
Here's a probably stupid question - if someone were unbounded by ethics and conceivably had enough power and connections to power to shield themselves from many consequences of their actions - and that person owned these DCs, could they in theory observe all the streams of tokens coming in and out of these models, and even exfiltrate copies of these models wholesale to have their own teams do what they will with them in the pursuit of building their own competitive models?
Or is there something fundamental in the way these models get deployed (encryption or something or than legal contracts?) at this scale that prohibits the owners of the infra from gaining this level of insight / access?
Bear in mind these data centers were built for X.ai to use themselves, so there would have been no reason to backdoor them. Also, this is all off-the shelf equipment: Dell & Supermicro servers with NVidia compute modules and ethernet switches.
Given Musk's previous antics, this strikes me as a relevant line of reasoning.
How do you trust space infra? You can't show up and audit some kind of airgap. Whatever encryption keys you have are likely accessible in memory sometime.
Could they also, if they owned a 10,300 vehicle fleet of orbiting satellites, add radar or optical surveillance to each, and track every human on planet early in real time?
How come a company like Anthropic has invested in photonic computing? If it's good enough for Boeing, I'd assume they would at least invest in it. qc-LPU100 seems worth it for some matrix mult, if it can be proven its O(n) (at least less than O(n^3).
I suppose you're also using Chinese models, who all have to be at the behest of the Communist party. China also have "horribly damaging" coal power plants. Do they acquire training data ethically? Do they censor? Be honest with yourself. Your concerns have nothing to do with ethic.
Ok, maybe this question is a bit silly, but could it possibly be that Elon is doing this to steal Anthropic models secrets and using them to improve Grok?
Love the curiosity. I recommend you spend that curiosity on figuring out why both companies are in the situation they are that this deal is a win-win: Elon has provided a masterclass in public company launch and management over the last 15 years. (And in recent years done it amidst an incredibly divisive reputational environment).
Put another way - they could maybe try to do this. But it would be worth literally nothing compared to the actual benefits to SX of this deal. And add an immense amount of risk. There’s much more clever and interesting things to do.
Concern maybe elsewhere, but I like how we have gone full circle.
SpaceX expects to complete its $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor roughly 30 days after it begins trading publicly, according to Bloomberg.
Cursor's Composer 2 model was built on Kimi K2.5, who were in turn accused of 'distillation' attacks by Anthropic.
Anthropic now relies on SpaceX for compute demands.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 67.5 ms ] threadBut booking outrageous rental fees as fake AI revenue ahead of the SpaceX IPO apparently takes precedence.
Note how the initial deal was only for the older Colossus #1 data center, and now after losing his lawsuit against OpenAI the Anthropic deal has been expanded to Colossus #2 also. Coincidence?
Edit: They did it with Colossus and now they're doing the exact same thing with Colossus2. https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
Also possible he sees infra as the future of xAI if he really believes in the value of space compute.
Hard to see this any of this as anything other than a bearish sign for Grok though.
Heard anybody remotely competent about space talk the topic? It's pretty much a literal laugh every time.
More promising is that cursor is training a model using it.
SAR benefits from space compute by reducing the strain on downlinks (pre-process, detect in space). A large-ish (think 6k sat) constellation of much bigger sats (2-2,5 ton) than current Starlink sats can run inference on board, distribute load to nearby sats, and enable full round-the-clock surveillance of the whole world.
The nominal compute capacity is in ballpark range of a modern AI data center, but it's only about 20% used on average due to duty cycles. An indestructible, global eye.
The big Starship launch vehicle is perfect platform to bring them into orbit, can maybe bring 40 at a time into orbit, so 150 launches for 6k. Maybe even fewer sats are needed, depends mostly on electrical efficiency of the components.
Or is there something fundamental in the way these models get deployed (encryption or something or than legal contracts?) at this scale that prohibits the owners of the infra from gaining this level of insight / access?
How do you trust space infra? You can't show up and audit some kind of airgap. Whatever encryption keys you have are likely accessible in memory sometime.
Disclosure: former (small) SX investor.
SpaceX S-1
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213933
I’d hoped Anthropic would steer clear of blatantly unethical practices but here they go in bed with that guy and his horribly damaging data center.
Put another way - they could maybe try to do this. But it would be worth literally nothing compared to the actual benefits to SX of this deal. And add an immense amount of risk. There’s much more clever and interesting things to do.
SpaceX expects to complete its $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor roughly 30 days after it begins trading publicly, according to Bloomberg.
Cursor's Composer 2 model was built on Kimi K2.5, who were in turn accused of 'distillation' attacks by Anthropic.
Anthropic now relies on SpaceX for compute demands.