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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?

#71

Post by VladVladikoff »

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?

Reviewing of images and video that is uploaded to my website.

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

#73

Post by keernan »

For AI doubters, please watch Neil deGrassi Tyson's interview of Geoffrey Hinton a few weeks ago. It's 90 minutes long. For me it was a game changer.

I am fully aware Hinton has been criticized for his views, but I urge you to listen to the interview and his reasoning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ZcFa8pybE

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

#74

Post by VladVladikoff »

falkensmaize wrote: post #23
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.

Reviewing of images and video that is uploaded to my website.

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

#75

Post by VladVladikoff »

akomtu wrote: post #15
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.

The value is negative to that worker, apparently.

Society on the whole, but this isn’t the first time I have automated away jobs, I have been doing it for years long before we had LLMs every where. In my opinion it is the only way to sustainably grow a company. Identify your biggest man hour costs and find a way to automate away those tasks.

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

#76

Post by cgio »

falkensmaize wrote: post #24
cgio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have an unsubstantiated understanding Ai investment is disproportionately capital intensive, and at least partially funded by self-fulfilling dreams of employment disappearing. Parts of the economy are already in recession and they would not mind not being alone in it.

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

#77

Post by tim333 »

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 quite likely won't become a $9T bust though because the investment so far is more like $0.8T. If things slump shortly it might be more like a $0.5T bust if you assume the things are worth 50% of what is being paid - there are a lot of paying users.

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

#78

Post by tim333 »

danaris wrote: post #57
atleastoptimal wrote: post #42

People really really don’t understand the implications of AGI. Whether or not you believe we will reach it in a fee years, we are certainly wayy closer today than we were even two years ago. The possibility of genuine AGI obliterates all the financial or energy related worries, they pale in comparison to the ultimate impact of such a technology. However, yes, if you believe AGI is not possible or won’t arrive in the…

First, you have to define "AGI". Next, you have to have a clear path to reaching it. Then, you have to have the resources to actually walk that path. Only with all three of those can you make any credible claim that AGI is near. As it stands, we have none of them—and the lack of the second is the most damning. It's very, very clear at this point that just scaling up the existing LLMs is not going to reach some critic…

On the other hand approx human brain equivalence in computers has been predicted fairly accurately since about 1990 based on Moore's law type projections - mid 2020s by Moravec, 2029 by Kurzweil. The underlying assumption is once the hardware is widely available, hackers will hack something together.

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

#79

Post by akomtu »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #75
akomtu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is negative to that worker, apparently.

Society on the whole, but this isn’t the first time I have automated away jobs, I have been doing it for years long before we had LLMs every where. In my opinion it is the only way to sustainably grow a company. Identify your biggest man hour costs and find a way to automate away those tasks.

Society as a whole is those workers. Capital, efficiency, GDP and similar things may be sky high, but the actual people will suffer.

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

#80

Post by elevation »

mjd wrote: post #35
elevation wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point was that Amazon wasn't independent from the frenzied, leveraged land grab that characterized the .COM bubble. Like many other companies, they were hiring aggressively until the bubble burst. Whether or not the companies went bust, a lot of people lost their jobs in a short time.
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