LW - "Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030?", Epoch AI (yes) by gwern

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030?", Epoch AI (yes), published by gwern on August 24, 2024 on LessWrong.
We investigate the scalability of AI training runs. We identify electric power, chip manufacturing, data and latency as constraints. We conclude that 2e29 FLOP training runs will likely be feasible by 2030.
Introduction
In recent years, the capabilities of AI models have significantly improved. Our research suggests that this growth in computational resources accounts for
a significant portion of AI performance improvements.
1 The consistent and predictable improvements from scaling have led AI labs to
aggressively expand the scale of training, with training compute expanding at a rate of approximately 4x per year.
To put this 4x annual growth in AI training compute into perspective, it outpaces even some of the fastest technological expansions in recent history. It surpasses the
peak growth rates of mobile phone adoption (2x/year, 1980-1987),
solar energy capacity installation (1.5x/year, 2001-2010), and h
uman genome sequencing (3.3x/year, 2008-2015).
Here, we examine whether it is technically feasible for the current rapid pace of AI training scaling - approximately 4x per year - to continue through 2030. We investigate four key factors that might constrain scaling: power availability, chip manufacturing capacity, data scarcity, and the "latency wall", a fundamental speed limit imposed by unavoidable delays in AI training computations.
Our analysis incorporates the expansion of production capabilities, investment, and technological advancements. This includes, among other factors, examining planned growth in advanced chip packaging facilities, construction of additional power plants, and the geographic spread of data centers to leverage multiple power networks.
To account for these changes, we incorporate projections from various public sources: semiconductor foundries' planned expansions, electricity providers' capacity growth forecasts, other relevant industry data, and our own research.
We find that training runs of 2e29 FLOP will likely be feasible by the end of this decade. In other words, by 2030 it will be very likely possible to train models that exceed GPT-4 in scale to the same degree that GPT-4 exceeds GPT-2 in scale.
2 If pursued, we might see by the end of the decade advances in AI as drastic as the difference between the rudimentary text generation of GPT-2 in 2019 and the sophisticated problem-solving abilities of GPT-4 in 2023.
Whether AI developers will actually pursue this level of scaling depends on their willingness to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI expansion over the coming years. While we briefly discuss the economics of AI investment later, a thorough analysis of investment decisions is beyond the scope of this report.
For each bottleneck we offer a conservative estimate of the relevant supply and the largest training run they would allow.
3 Throughout our analysis, we assume that training runs could last between two to nine months, reflecting
the trend towards longer durations. We also assume that when distributing AI data center power for distributed training and chips companies will only be able to muster about
10% to 40% of the existing supply.
4
Power constraints. Plans for data center campuses of 1 to 5 GW by 2030 have already
been
discussed, which would support training runs ranging from 1e28 to 3e29 FLOP (for reference, GPT-4 was likely around 2e25 FLOP). Geographically distributed training could tap into multiple regions' energy infrastructure to scale further. Given current projections of US data center expansion, a US distributed network could likely accommodate 2 to 45 GW, which assuming sufficient inter-data center bandwidth would support training runs from 2e28 to 2e30 FLOP.
Beyond this, an actor willing to...