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Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

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Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#21

Post by monodeldiablo »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #11

I replaced a $22/hr worker entirely with AI. And it costs me about $0.18/hr instead. The AI does a better job, is more reliable and consistent. The human was constantly behind schedule, made frequent mistakes, and also humans get sick, or call off work for other reasons. So yes, AI is a bubble, but this bubble has generated value, it’s not at all like 2008.

$0.18/hr is the (massively) subsidized price of AI services. Once these companies are required to turn a profit for their investors, they'll raise the price. Then the math doesn't look so lopsided. We're already seeing this process unfold with token windows and ad rollout.

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#23

Post by falkensmaize »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #11

I replaced a $22/hr worker entirely with AI. And it costs me about $0.18/hr instead. The AI does a better job, is more reliable and consistent. The human was constantly behind schedule, made frequent mistakes, and also humans get sick, or call off work for other reasons. So yes, AI is a bubble, but this bubble has generated value, it’s not at all like 2008.

I too, want to hear details about what this person did that they could be replaced completely with LLMs.

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#24

Post by falkensmaize »

cgio wrote: post #8
woeirua wrote: post #4

Better hope not. If the AI bubble pops it’s going to make the dotcom bubble look like a tiny divot in the road.

We already have our jobs on the line with AI, right? How will a crash be worse in personal terms?

There's a lot of people who think the only thing keeping us out of a serious recession or even depression is AI investment.

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#25

Post by floralhangnail »

chriscc wrote: post #16
VladVladikoff wrote: post #11

I replaced a $22/hr worker entirely with AI. And it costs me about $0.18/hr instead. The AI does a better job, is more reliable and consistent. The human was constantly behind schedule, made frequent mistakes, and also humans get sick, or call off work for other reasons. So yes, AI is a bubble, but this bubble has generated value, it’s not at all like 2008.

Just curious, what did your human worker do that you were able to entirely automate?

My bet is something administrative, like reminding people to approve their timesheets for payroll. AI wouldn't be needed to replace that job though, just a recurring calendar event.

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#26

Post by monodeldiablo »

It's not really even a question. It's an obvious boondoggle. The forecasted net new energy requirements for the AI buildout over the next couple of years are roughly equivalent to all of Western Europe's power demand today.

That's absurd. It's a physical impossibility to bring that much power online that quickly. And the cost to get even close would make AI more expensive than just hiring knowledge workers to do the same tasks.

And it's all predicated on a tower of wobbly or broken assumptions -- chief among them that increasing the size of these models yields better performance.

We're going to look back on this era and wonder why anybody took any of the outrageous claims of tech CEOs seriously.

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#28

Post by joegibbs »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #21
VladVladikoff wrote: post #11

I replaced a $22/hr worker entirely with AI. And it costs me about $0.18/hr instead. The AI does a better job, is more reliable and consistent. The human was constantly behind schedule, made frequent mistakes, and also humans get sick, or call off work for other reasons. So yes, AI is a bubble, but this bubble has generated value, it’s not at all like 2008.

$0.18/hr is the (massively) subsidized price of AI services. Once these companies are required to turn a profit for their investors, they'll raise the price. Then the math doesn't look so lopsided. We're already seeing this process unfold with token windows and ad rollout.

It's not that subsidised, this is just wishful thinking. You can run a local model like Qwen for equivalent prices. You might see it go up to $0.50/hr but you're definitely not going to see it at $22

Re: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9T bust?

#30

Post by kcb »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #21
VladVladikoff wrote: post #11

I replaced a $22/hr worker entirely with AI. And it costs me about $0.18/hr instead. The AI does a better job, is more reliable and consistent. The human was constantly behind schedule, made frequent mistakes, and also humans get sick, or call off work for other reasons. So yes, AI is a bubble, but this bubble has generated value, it’s not at all like 2008.

$0.18/hr is the (massively) subsidized price of AI services. Once these companies are required to turn a profit for their investors, they'll raise the price. Then the math doesn't look so lopsided. We're already seeing this process unfold with token windows and ad rollout.

Inference isn't really that expensive, its the training of new foundational models that is. With whatever highly optimized setup the big providers are using, they should be able to pack quite a lot of concurrent users onto a deployment of a model. Just think too, it's very possible their use case would be served just fine by a 100B model deployed to a $4,000 DGX Spark.
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