Live data from Hacker News

What's slowing down the AI buildout

worksinprogress.news

41–50 of 237 posts

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#41
post #22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is opposing renewable energy? Texas is projected to top California as the state with the largest amount of solar before the end of the Trump administration.

> Who is opposing renewable energy? The current US admin: Trump’s Multi-Pronged Attack on Renewable Energy https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?par... but they are slowly being beaten back: Trump admin abandons fight against wind energy as clean energy output surges - https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/trump-admin-abandons... The Trumpian adventures in Iran have wrong footed his fossil fuel b…

He hates wind turbines because he simply doesn't like how they look, and couldn't stop them next to one of his golf courses.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#42
post #37

Project Kilby is probably the most intelligent approach to this problem so far. https://www.chevron.com/newsroom/2026/q2/chevron-signs-20-ye... The idea is to bring the data centers, power generators and energy supply together in the ~same physical space so the only thing you have to transmit is data. Moving energy is way more expensive than moving information.

The ocean tidal power data center idea was a neat one.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seriously proposing that a country with regular mass-shootings should give everyone a device that can cause a radioactive meltdown or a small explosion?

We already let people have cars and those things are crazy dangerous! No one should be allowed anything, ever, until we bubble wrap everything in the world to be perfectly safe!

Well, we already have strict background checks, licensing and regulations for a scenario such as if a person wants start a home based business manufacturing and storing C4, Semtex or similar at their rural property. If the idea is to start handing out nuclear reactors for peoples' houses, the possible damage that could be done is far greater. No matter how well packaged it is or designed to be consumer friendly.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#44
post #5

The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity. The bottleneck for building some AI datacentres and switching them on is electricity, sure, but that's not what drives growth. There also needs to be demand for the additional capacity; people need to be waiting for capacity to catch up so they can do the useful work that grows [society|GDP|something] that they aren't doing right now. There's a…

I cannot currently access Fable class models, I am out of usage credits.

Anthropic is removing these larger models from personal plans at the end of the week to focus on selling it to enterprise users.

Putting these more intelligent new models into the hands of more people seems very worthwhile to me.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s everywhere. It’s in the shed in your backyard. Nobody knows it’s there. Lots of people have them. It’s an appliance. The worst thing an evildoer can do is blow up your own house and the few around it. and no one does that because you go to jail forever. The worst thing you can do is let it melt down, which means it quietly shuts itself down.

> The worst thing an evildoer can do is blow up your own house and the few around it. No, they can take the isotopes out and dump it into your local water supply. Or if they're suicidal and the isotopes have been encapsulated in some sort of tamperproof system, grid the whole thing down to granulated powder using less than $20,000 of power tools (disregarding their own health and the entire nearby area, of course) an…

If someone evil has access to the water supply, is radioactive material the worst they could do? that'll, what, give some people cancer which is really bad but it'll take a while to get them. If people wanted to be shitheads, they could already dump arsenic or LSD into the water supply, or any number of others things. that are already available to them right now! Have you personally tested your taps chlorine or flouride or lead levels recently?

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#46
1. People fighting back due to never ending effects caused by these massive data centers

2. Companies realising that they are burning half million to get nowhere

3. Circular investment scaring investors

4. And more recently, companies hiring people back coz the AI aimed to replace humans, created more problems than solved them

5. Memory cartel falling apart, again, they did the same thing during 2000s

6. China is making good ML free, supply and demand, destroying the US tech token business model

7. Even META has too much computer power and no enough use for them.

Those are the main reasons why AI buildout is not just slowing down but falling apart faster than expected.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#47
post #5

The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity. The bottleneck for building some AI datacentres and switching them on is electricity, sure, but that's not what drives growth. There also needs to be demand for the additional capacity; people need to be waiting for capacity to catch up so they can do the useful work that grows [society|GDP|something] that they aren't doing right now. There's a…

I cannot currently access Fable class models, I am out of usage credits. Anthropic is removing these larger models from personal plans at the end of the week to focus on selling it to enterprise users. Putting these more intelligent new models into the hands of more people seems very worthwhile to me.

I don't think Anthropic are doing that because they don't have enough compute capacity. If we had 100* more datacentres the message would still be the same - they're focusing on selling Fable access to enterprise users because that's what makes them more money.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#48
post #5

The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity. The bottleneck for building some AI datacentres and switching them on is electricity, sure, but that's not what drives growth. There also needs to be demand for the additional capacity; people need to be waiting for capacity to catch up so they can do the useful work that grows [society|GDP|something] that they aren't doing right now. There's a…

I cannot currently access Fable class models, I am out of usage credits. Anthropic is removing these larger models from personal plans at the end of the week to focus on selling it to enterprise users. Putting these more intelligent new models into the hands of more people seems very worthwhile to me.

Do you pay API prices? Or are you on some of those plans that are deeply unprofitable?

I am not even sure if API prices are actually profitable, but they certainly aren't as unprofitable as the subscription plan users.

Either way, that's why you don't have access. It has nothing to do with capacity constraints.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#49
post #5

The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity. The bottleneck for building some AI datacentres and switching them on is electricity, sure, but that's not what drives growth. There also needs to be demand for the additional capacity; people need to be waiting for capacity to catch up so they can do the useful work that grows [society|GDP|something] that they aren't doing right now. There's a…

The most important sentences of the article are:

"Discussions about expanding electricity supply to power the future often become debates about which source is most suitable: gas, nuclear, solar, or something else. But these are a distraction. Far more fundamental is ensuring power can be efficiently delivered where needed."

This is the reason why data centers are not run only on cheap solar power.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot currently access Fable class models, I am out of usage credits. Anthropic is removing these larger models from personal plans at the end of the week to focus on selling it to enterprise users. Putting these more intelligent new models into the hands of more people seems very worthwhile to me.

Do you pay API prices? Or are you on some of those plans that are deeply unprofitable? I am not even sure if API prices are actually profitable, but they certainly aren't as unprofitable as the subscription plan users. Either way, that's why you don't have access. It has nothing to do with capacity constraints.

We do not know whether subscription plans are unprofitable at all.

Some estimates suggest that this is the case only for the heaviest users.

Many seem to confuse API prices with the actual cost to serve the models, and thus reach the conclusion that subscriptions must be deeply unprofitable.

Anthropic is officially citing capacity constraints with the intent to bring the Fable model back to subscriptions plans as soon as capacity allows.

Post reply on HN