Alibaba Chief Warns of Constraints as China AI Training Ramps Up

Alibaba Group hasn't been able to completely fulfill demand for AI training from clients because of global supply constraints, its top executive said, suggesting a shortage of critical components such as artificial intelligence chips is weighing on Chinese efforts to ramp up in the cutting-edge technology. From a report: "In the past quarter, we have received strong demand for model training and related services on cloud infrastructure, which were only partially fulfilled due to the near-term supply chain constraints globally," Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang, who steps down in September, told analysts on a conference call. He will focus on Alibaba's cloud business full-time after ceding his dual roles to Alibaba co-founders Joseph Tsai and Eddie Wu. A shortage of high-powered semiconductors is undermining Chinese efforts to keep pace with the US in AI. Washington has banned Chinese firms from buying the most advanced chips made by Nvidia, impeding attempts to build rivals to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Really?

[hdyoung]

Cant they just buy a bunch of 4090s and string them together? I find it extremely hard to believe that they’re going to be limited by computational power. Or just re-purpose a few of the already-built massively parallel supercomputers they have. Will it be optimal? Nah, but it’s not like they can’t just burn a little more electricity to get the job done.