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Later, the robot enacts a global state that refers to but is not equivalent to anger.

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

President Donald Trump has announced yuge deals with the United Arab Emirates — including a fantastic new AI data centre in Abu Dhabi! [White House]

The question is how to sell millions of Nvidia chips to the UAE. The UAE is under US export restrictions on Nvidia GPUs because the US doesn’t trust them not to leak chips to China. [Reuters, archive]

But if the UAE spends billions of dollars on US AI companies and data centres, that’ll get them a pass on the export restrictions.

Local company G42 is talking up a 5 gigawatt data centre with a couple of million GPUs They’ll start off with a one-gigawatt data centre. [FT, archive]

So what does this mean? Nothing. It’s hot air and hype.

In the rest of the world, the AI data centre bubble is deflating. Hyperscaling is a dead end. The US players are pulling back from their past overcommitments.

A new data centre has a lead time of a few years. If the new UAE data centre is built — which is not the least bit certain — it’ll be a gigantic white elephant.

The UAE needs money from something that isn’t oil, so they cargo-cult new tech. This decade, it’s AI.

Remember that by the year, 2020 Dubai will be fully powered by the blockchain. IBM tells us how “2018 is very much the year where we are starting to see serious adoption of the technology.” Can’t wait to see it in action! [Digital Dubai, 2016, archive; IBM, 2016, archive]

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