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Where Are All the Data Centers?

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Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#11

Post by leonidasrup »

llbbdd wrote: post #9
csoups14 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insanely useful" doesn't mean hundreds of billions of dollars of upfront investment from our largest corporations is prudent especially when proponents of AI don't seem to approach the risk honestly. The argument isn't just that AI is going to take over the world, it's that the consequences of massively over-investing in it could lead to a broader economic collapse more like the Great Depression than the Dot Com bub…

This is not money that would otherwise be going to agriculture or energy; one of the few salient points that Ed makes is that a lot of these deals are circular and based on invented money. I think the comparison to the dot com bubble is sound purely because basically every DC investment that exploded would have been legacy-defining investments if they'd been able to stay solvent until like 2010. Some companies and so…

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Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#12

Post by krabat »

Look outside of USA.

See data centres being constructed in areas with green energy, forcing countries to revert to petro and update power grids to accommodate FUTURE "needs" and governments discounting power bills due to... yeah, due to what, actually?

Also watch power bills rising in USA due to faulty leadership, and power lines above-ground constantly at risk during the climbing number of destructive hurricanes.

Think bigger and with broader out-reach: All of these companies are forging deals left and right, and - let me guess - some as part of threat-package deals "suggested" by the present US trade administration.

Soon, very soon, many of these US/EU-data centres will be forcefully discontinued as part of growing EU-independence. And good riddence, too.

Yes, I think AI is an industry in need of a prodcuct, and they are minions of the anti-christ of Capitalism and Consumer-Slaverism. This is already a failed project, as it is done without the ethics of collectivity (to the benefit of "more than me"), to paraphrase Kierkegaard. Me, you and All. Only power and enrichment in this end-time, when care could have leveled the plane and touched us all equally GOOD.

Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#13

Post by anonymous_user9 »

llbbdd wrote: post #8
anonymous_user9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's admittedly anti-AI, what knowledge work does it replace? It seems to me it supplements some knowledge work, while outsourcing actual intelligence to the human operator. IMO it seems like most AI intelligence is just a Clever Hans situation: the AI produces a stream of responses, and the human selects the one that is correct, then they conclude that the AI is intelligent.

Let me prefix by saying that I'm solidly in some kind of AI middle ground. I think people who are fully outsourcing everything they do to AI are insane, and I think people who have planted their feet and are pretending AI is useless are also insane. The way I think about it is that a lot of what we considered knowledge work isn't anymore. In "the before times", I would have considered it knowledge work to know how to…

> I think if the bar is to consider it not a replacement for knowledge work as long as there is a human in the loop.

That's where I put it personally, because of humans' limited amount of useful focus during a work day.

Anything that requires human attention will take some of that resource, and don't think models' rate of improvement will be fast enough to overcome that in the near future. Reviewing an output that is 99%, 99.9%, or 99.99% correct all take about the same amount of time, so the output needs to be correct enough not to need review before any knowledge work is replaced.

Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#14

Post by thorncorona »

krabat wrote: post #12

Look outside of USA. See data centres being constructed in areas with green energy, forcing countries to revert to petro and update power grids to accommodate FUTURE "needs" and governments discounting power bills due to... yeah, due to what, actually? Also watch power bills rising in USA due to faulty leadership, and power lines above-ground constantly at risk during the climbing number of destructive hurricanes. Th…

This is funny to say because EU QOL stays afloat due to cheap imports from China.

Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#15

Post by djhn »

anonymous_user9 wrote: post #13
llbbdd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me prefix by saying that I'm solidly in some kind of AI middle ground. I think people who are fully outsourcing everything they do to AI are insane, and I think people who have planted their feet and are pretending AI is useless are also insane. The way I think about it is that a lot of what we considered knowledge work isn't anymore. In "the before times", I would have considered it knowledge work to know how to…

> I think if the bar is to consider it not a replacement for knowledge work as long as there is a human in the loop. That's where I put it personally, because of humans' limited amount of useful focus during a work day. Anything that requires human attention will take some of that resource, and don't think models' rate of improvement will be fast enough to overcome that in the near future. Reviewing an output that is…

I’m afraid your numbers, all over 99%, are anchoring the conversation to an unreasonably high quality level.

I would have personally gone for 75%, 85% and 95%, which are all still best case scenario answers.

Had I taken on chatbot advice on electronics or chemistry I’d have died every couple of weeks (doing some hands-on real world R&D in my basement as a distraction from software).

Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#16

Post by stunlocked »

thundergolfer wrote: post #2

I just can’t handle this guy’s “it’s a tulip bubble!” approach when just yesterday Thinking Machines released a demo which would have been taken as literal magic if it was shown 20 years ago. The tech is astonishing and Ed spends 98% of his writing acting like the industry is a scam.

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Re: Where Are All the Data Centers?

#18

Post by johanneskanybal »

llbbdd wrote: post #3
thundergolfer wrote: post #2

I just can’t handle this guy’s “it’s a tulip bubble!” approach when just yesterday Thinking Machines released a demo which would have been taken as literal magic if it was shown 20 years ago. The tech is astonishing and Ed spends 98% of his writing acting like the industry is a scam.

This entire article spends a lot of time hiding the ball and conflating what I'd distinguish as "data centers" vs. "data center capacity". Existing data center capacity is being allocated to AI because that's where the demand is, this is in addition to future data center capacity still in the process of being built. Microsoft and others are playing word games and combining both numbers for PR purposes, which I think…

it-bubble investor here. I think you're missing the point. Take a look at a 30 year graph of something from that era let's say Ericsson B. Phone networks are still around and very useful that's totally besides the point as far as valuations goes.

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NASDAQ%3AERIC

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