Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 83 posts

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

#31

Post by jen729w »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #26

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…

> It's a physical impossibility to bring that much power online that quickly.

China begs to differ.

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

#32

Post by jen729w »

starkeeper wrote: post #5
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.

How would this be a bad thing?

Because everyone's retirement depends on the stock market. If you're unlucky and your portfolio vests the day after a massive crash, that can have a very meaningful impact on the rest of your life.

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

#34

Post by aoeusnth1 »

monodeldiablo wrote: post #26

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…

> Wobbly assumption that increasing the size of these models yields better performance.

I'm assuming you disagree that larger models are better? Can you expand on what indicates that AI will hit a wall in scaling given the evidence of the last 9 years of scaling transformers (or other models)? Where on the plot does the line go from exponential to flat?

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

#35

Post by mjd »

elevation wrote: post #10
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.

The .COM bubble was more than a divot because .COMs in so many industries employed so many people. There was amazon.com, but also pets.com, lowermybills.com, gateway.com. But if our economy somehow loses access to AI (rationing due to wartime efforts? sabotage by a foreign nation? simply not enough grid power to turn them on at the price people are willing to pay?) I would probably need to hire more coders to get the…

Did amazon.com go bust? Seems like I heard they were still in business as of a couple of years ago at least.

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

#36

Post by monodeldiablo »

joegibbs wrote: post #28
monodeldiablo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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

I do run open models locally, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that they're functionally competitive. I'm extremely skeptical of anybody claiming they've obviated a $22/hr job with an open model. Qwen is a big step down in capability. I can play with something like k2.5 for awhile, but if I want real work done I'm going back to a frontier model, which has significant runtime requirements for inference.

You're also ignoring the cost of purchasing and amortizing dedicated hardware in your local model example.

It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

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

#37

Post by esseph »

DesiLurker wrote: post #13
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.

why? its all private money funding AI at the moment, sure some data centre reality companies would go belly up but you will be surprised to find out how much of it is big headlines and very little action. there is a lot of installations and GPUs not yet brought online but marked as sold because of .. well physical world delays. Let me put it this way, IF AI is a bubble then I'd like it to go bust asap instead of drag…

> The thing with dot-com was that there was actual public market corruption & euphoria.

Just like now, the financial cup game is insane. Commiting money to a company that plans on doing a thing if they can get another company to do a thing and then that company is leveraging those cumulative possibilities in its own wager. The speculation is out of control.

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

#38

Post by monodeldiablo »

jen729w wrote: post #31
monodeldiablo wrote: post #26

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…

> It's a physical impossibility to bring that much power online that quickly. China begs to differ.

I played a role in China's shift to renewables. It's been decades in the making.

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

#39

Post by emp17344 »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #34
monodeldiablo wrote: post #26

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…

> Wobbly assumption that increasing the size of these models yields better performance. I'm assuming you disagree that larger models are better? Can you expand on what indicates that AI will hit a wall in scaling given the evidence of the last 9 years of scaling transformers (or other models)? Where on the plot does the line go from exponential to flat?

Why do you believe progress is currently exponential? There’s one dubious chart showing “exponential growth” in a single narrow domain, and otherwise zero evidence to suggest exponential improvement.

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

#40

Post by righthand »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #34
monodeldiablo wrote: post #26

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…

> Wobbly assumption that increasing the size of these models yields better performance. I'm assuming you disagree that larger models are better? Can you expand on what indicates that AI will hit a wall in scaling given the evidence of the last 9 years of scaling transformers (or other models)? Where on the plot does the line go from exponential to flat?

In my experience the models havent gotten any better, just the hype.
Post reply on HN