Cloud computing is a great resource _if_ you have a workload that's embarrassingly parallel, i.e. can be parallelized with little communication between processes. A lot of workloads aren't like that - if you look at the big supercomputers, they typically use off-the-shelf CPU and GPU chips, most of the specialized engineering wizardry goes into providing high-bandwidth, low latency communication. But some workloads do fit cloud computing, particularly if you need to do a bunch of tests of the same task with different parameter choices or whatever.
As for the woo-woo part of your post, the classic quote that comes to mind is, 'isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'. On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 11:50 PM, just camel <[email protected]> wrote: > Could AGI emerge through amazon AWS? > > With the new reduced amazon AWS prices (see > http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ and > http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/) one can get a whooping 2500 EC2 > CUs / 1000 virtual cores / 875gig of ram for 82,5USD per hour (125 "High-CPU > Extra Large" EC2 instances) and if that person triggers the singularity > he/she would probably not even have to pay the bills anyway. > > Of course those instances lack the floating point capabilities of a Nvidia > Tesla/Kepler setup certain programmatically approaches to AGI would require > (for processing optical input, etc.) but the processing power and memory > should be enough for many highly parallel projects. Everyone with the right > idea and 80$ on their hands could probably trigger the singularity? Or think > about multiplying those numbers by 10? > > I have never spawned more than a hand full of instances at once and I don't > really know about the actual physical processing power certain AWS regions > can provide but I guess it is safe to assume that 1000 cores and 875gig of > ram would not be a problem? So if you can't get people to voluntarily > provide processing power via BOINC in order for you to save the world it > might now be just a matter of spending a few 100 bucks to get massive > amounts of on demand computational resources. > > Conclusion: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world > drops by one point." is probably just the plain truth. > > Any thoughts? > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/1658954-f53d1a3f > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
