Gavin Baker

The argument for selling deprecated GPUs to China: Selling them less advanced GPUs than we have in America decreases the odds that they develop more advanced GPUs than America that go down a different, more power intensive tech tree. Pro national-security.

@PatrickMoorhead Ha thank you

@GavinSBaker Stop making so much sense.

The argument for selling deprecated GPUs to China: Selling them less advanced GPUs than we have in America decreases the odds that they develop more advanced GPUs than America that go down a different, more power intensive tech tree. Pro national-security.

@losaturnalia @DAlperovitch Agree! This plus WFE restrictions best policy imo.

@DAlperovitch @frncsc2020 Ok man. I hope that you can recognize that there are good faith arguments on the other side rather than continuously dismissing them as “moronic, terrible, stupid, etc.” There are no perfect policies. There is no black/white here.

@GavinSBaker @frncsc2020 It won’t advance anything and especially not deter war over Taiwan

@DAlperovitch @frncsc2020 Yes. And result will only be higher per token prices for American consumers and businesses which is an ok tradeoff for advancing our national security and hopefully deterring/avoiding WW3 over Taiwan.

@GavinSBaker @frncsc2020 We don’t have enough inference compute either

@DAlperovitch @frncsc2020 For inference. They are super deprecated for training especially with even more deprecated networking technology. Given your semiconductor expertise, you must understand this.

@GavinSBaker @frncsc2020 They are so deprecated that AWS is hiking prices for their use by US customers datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-qu…

@DAlperovitch @frncsc2020 B30s and H200s are heavily deprecated relative to GB200s and GB300s. And the networking tech is even more deprecated. The policy is not to sell them H200s with the most advanced NVLink and scale-out Ethernet.

@GavinSBaker @frncsc2020 What are these deprecated GPUs you are talking about? Blackwells that Jensen wants to sell? H200s that tons of American companies would love to get their hands on?

This is the best argument against selling them deprecated GPUs. But reality is a lot of GPUs in America are being used for inference - we have the GPUs we need for training. So result is actually higher token prices for American consumers/businesses which is an ok tradeoff to advance national security.

@GavinSBaker @frncsc2020 Every single GPU we produce for China is capacity we don’t have to produce chips for American AI companies (and our government) who are all massively compute constrained. On top of helping China, it literally hurts American AI companies which is why they all oppose this

@Loose_Alpha Absolutely agree

@GavinSBaker The fundamental question here is time horizon, when our adversaries will hit critical thresholds in model capabilities, and what our export strategy does to that timeline + long term equilibrium

@DAlperovitch @frncsc2020 This is good policy. This plus selling them deprecated GPUs is best for American national security IMO.

@frncsc2020 @GavinSBaker That’s part of it

@chazt1995 @DAlperovitch I failed at the first and almost certainly would have failed at the second outside of finance/ops. Happy to concede that Dmitri is the superior intellect.

@GavinSBaker @DAlperovitch Tried to look it up or tried to get employed in the industry ?

@DAlperovitch That is also my goal. I think it would be helpful to agree to disagree while recognizing that are there are good faith arguments for both approaches and no good answer. The world is almost never black and white.

@GavinSBaker Apology accepted. The only explanation is that I don’t want to enable China to build better models which should be the objective of everyone who doesn’t want CCP to get stronger

@DAlperovitch I actually tried and nothing came up.

@GavinSBaker Look it up. When did you work in the industry?

@DAlperovitch I apologize wholeheartedly for suggesting that you did not understand the networking technology necessary for the RL required to get to RSI on MoE models. I was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for your policy stance.

@GavinSBaker You are the one who attacked me by claiming I don’t understand this tech. I worked at a company called Intel. Ever heard of them?

@DAlperovitch No I think we *should* restrict exports of WFE to China. I am ok disagreeing with Jensen.

@GavinSBaker So you want to help them build advanced chips too?

@DAlperovitch Ad-hominem attacks like this are always and only a reflection on the attacker and the strength of their argument. What semiconductor company did you work at and when was this?

@GavinSBaker lol. I’ve only worked at a semiconductor company unlike you. But sure I don’t get this tech

@DAlperovitch @jasonprgressive They might be able to do it either way, just think it is less likely this way. There are no good choices.

@jasonprgressive @GavinSBaker Oh but China will be able to do it somehow if we don’t sell them Blackwells? You are literally contradicting your own argument

@DAlperovitch Ok. I think we should.

@GavinSBaker And btw Jensen wants to kill export controls on SMEs also

@DAlperovitch It will definitely not lead to them getting to RSI faster. This is absolutely wrong. I do not think you understand the networking tech necessary to enable the development of RSI capable AI for MoE models This is the best policy understanding there is no good policy.

@GavinSBaker This is literally one of the top priorities for the CCP. They will not slow down no matter what we do. The only thing this will do is accelerate their development of frontier models and reaching RSI faster. Literally the dumbest idea ever

No. I just think it will slow them down and decrease the odds they will succeed. But with RSI, time is an overwhelming advantage. And the only reason we need to “scream” about it is the domestic debate created by people who, with the best of intentions, are damaging our national security. Super agree on export controls for WFE.

@GavinSBaker Do you think they are morons and will sit back and kill all their attempts to build advance chips while we are screaming that we are going to get them addicted to ours? You know what one thing is that hurts their progress in this area? Export controls on chip making equipment!