More and more mainstream analysts are identifying the coming AI crash, which is a good indication that it will happen soon.
So, what happens to all the data centers? They are already built but probably very expensive to maintain. Will many of them just be abandoned? Bought up by cloud computing companies? Scammers? Crypto miners? Can they be parted out and sold off piecemeal?
Will they be put to some productive use, or just become massive e-waste sites left to the locals to deal with?
They will just turn all the empty space inside into detention centers and keep all of us locked up.
Apparently the US government is looking to give a massive bailout under the guise of “public partnership” so the public will pay for them and then corporations will get to use them and not pay us more than likely. They’ll be put to use, we’ll pay for them to take our jobs. It’s really the best situation possible…
/Wrist
This is the most accurate assessment of the situation I have heard thus far.
2008 with hardware.
Hardware that dies in 5 years. At least the houses are still around assuming they didn’t get wiped out with those fires
American houses are built with cardboard paper, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been destroyed by now.
I hate that this is actually pretty accurate, depending on which contractor you go with.
Whole neighborhoods were built during the housing bubble that had contaminated drywall (gypsum board) with sulfate VOCs that had to be gutted or torn down completely.
All this hardware is essentially worthless other than AI
Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.
If anyone thinks I’m wrong, they’re completely blind to what’s going on and their future plan.
If anyone thinks I’m wrong, they’re completely blind to what’s going on and their future plan.
But the hallucination problem means that everyone will end up with a meaningless list of AI hallucinated “prior offenses” that could be used to arrest, detain and disappear literally anyone, based on mismatched unaudited surveillance footage of completely different people.
I’m thankful that no powerful persons today want a world where they can do that to anyone they find inconvenient.
It would be genuinely alarming if we had any total assholes out there with wealth or power or both.
Mmhm very alarming. Good thing we are safe.
What the LLMs can do reasonably well though is determine the political leanings of people’s typed messages, so it can sort people into lists of potential dissidents based on their risk to the state, then they can have the human agents do the framing for arrest. The AI is probably terrible at doing that consistently too, but they don’t have the personnel to do it by hand and the false positives still work to instill the fear of it.
you dropped this, /s
someone might mistake you for a brain damaged psych patient without it.
do not insult my patients
patents?
Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.
Yes, and other sources. That’s my theory as to why most of them are being built in the first place, regardless of AI.
I dont believe its a theory. Its absolute fact. Why else would they be requiring cameras in all cars next year, and putting flock cameras all over every city? That surveillance data needs to be stored and sorted through. This is the real reason for the massive push of data centers and bribery of politicians.
Yes, they’ve been wanting to do it for many years, even before 9/11 but especially after (remember “Total Information Awareness”?–back then the backlash stopped them, but now the populace has been mostly tamed and made compliant). So now with AI/LLM they have not only the perfect cover to build the datacenters but also the means to process all that data–never mind hallucinations, they’re fine with that too.
We can only hope for an Anonymous level sabotage group.
Do yoy have any proof for that or is that just what you think is going to happen?
Spirit Halloween gonna have some massive sales.
If they’re already operational when that happens, likely sold off to cloud hyper scalers on the cheap. That or they’ll be turned into warehouses.
Nothing half done will just be abandoned and the land sold.
A boom in local AI as people buy the crazy expensive video cards for pennies on the dollar for home usage?
Press X to doubt
Yeah, these cards will most likely be in pieces rather than reused by people.
It’s also just that local AI is not worth the time and energy unless you’re a prick with too much money and incoherent ideology
Incoherent ideology ?
There’s a few people who are like:
- AI bad, cause environmental, capitalism, and training data being based on spyware
- but if I run local AI, those magically all stop being true, because I think it hard enough
Ah, yeah, I’ve seen that.
There are also people who want to run locally for other reasons as well.
Privacy being a big one, but there are others.
I’m not sure what the ratios are though.
Wouldn’t that be an inconsistent ideology?
Same thing
I think that means a dictator with a speech impediment.
I like the joke
Those gpu’s are not useful as video cards.
I said for local AI, I didnt say for gaming.
As long as you want a high wattage server running the electric bill up.
Get ready for the 2040 internet trend “spending the night in an abandoned data center”
Horror movie idea: The Rackrooms
The Racks
Has a good double entendre for horror
Hopefully, for the CEOs and people who made them happen,
I’d argue that “burning the guillotine” can happen after it makes its comeback, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The worst punishment anyone could inflict on those who govern and police us today would be to compel them to live in a society in which everything they’ve done is regarded as embarrassing
The ones being built or planned to be built will have to be sold off.
Probably not abadndoned, but land owner changing several hands in what is essentially someone buying a vacant lot. Maybe a handful will reuse any existing building already made, but most will be used for something new.
The existing ones will start their fight to the lowest market price which will probably cause many to either sell to a different cloud provider or change hardware to something more profitable.
None of the electronic hardware will go to waste because there will always be a demand for it, even if they sell it off at a loss. But any permanent fixtures like industrial cabling, ventilation, piping, etc probably will be wasted.
There’s still no guarantee on whether it’ll implode or just slowly deflate though. The natural assumption would be that the post IPO pricing will completely wreck sales and value, but they could easily move to an enterprise vendor lock scenario where they can charge whatever they want due to tech stack deals like how MSFT runs teams.
Remember, they’ll do anything in their power to keep the pumping going, even if it involves tax bailouts.
Hire funny wood it be if they tried to get a tax bail out and Trump approved it but he actually can’t do it since there’s no money left to bail them out
World’s
Biggest
LAN Party!One thing not mentioned here: Hardware has an expiration date. As hardware improves and becomes more performant, with reduced power consumption and heat generation, older hardware loses its value (I’ve got free servers and switches this way).
AI data centers have been built anticipating a demand that won’t happen, therefore they are in a market already over saturated, dominated by few and just selling allocation won’t let them cover costs if they are supposed to compete against the big 5.
I would say that in EU or few other countries where they care about data locality that could help, but chances are some providers won’t get paid, some people will lose their jobs, and taxpayers will give a bailout to the wrong people.
It’s actually worse. The die shinks that help increase speed and density decrease durability. You can’t run lightning between walls a few atoms thick forever.
A golden age for laser tag arenas
I would prefer a roller rink revival myself, but laser tag is fun too.
Ok hear me out: Roller laser tag!
grils! grils! there’s plenty of floorspace for both!
Indoor airsoft/paintball too, provided it’s purged of MAGA cosplayers
My doom scenario: They will become low security prisons/manufacturing factories.
Or Company Housing to go along with the Company Store where you will always be short 1 Company Buck to buy that half loaf of day old white bread…same thing, really.Not sure about the buildings themselves, but I’m pretty confident at least their contents will flood the secondhand market with cheap secondhand gear. I won’t say the crypto bubble has burst, but a lot of the mining rigs are being parted out and sold fairly cheap, and one specific crypto mining board has become popular as a DIY gaming system. (Currently doing a BC-250 “DIY SteamMachine” build myself).
As for the buildings, maybe we’ll see some creative uses like indoor farms or something. Or, perhaps, it’ll just be a mundane “AI datacenter becomes a generic data center”.
I’d guess they’d be repurposed into business centers or office space like we’ve seen with old malls, but malls were usually in populated areas where datacenters aren’t.
It’s kinda hard to reuse datacenter hardware for home use. Many connectors are different, form factors too. Not to mention the noise, in servers noise is about the last priority.
Selfhosting enthusiasts will get great deals, but I doubt it will become mainstream.
If my gaming PC dose not sound like a jet taking off, I’m not satisfied.
the bigger problem is, that AI optimized GPUs have terrible gaming performance
My stupid Ai side project would be fast as fuck though.
Based on where brick and mortar retail is right now (and assuming e-commerce continues to thrive), there won’t be much conversion of the data centers into anything useful due to how many buildings are already sitting idle. Maybe some will become distribution centers. But most will probably sit dormant and slowly crumble into disrepair.
They have great electrical connections. Fill them with batteries (not spicy lithium ones) and you have loads of local energy storage.
Lots of the difficulties with green projects right now is the electrical hook up, so they have all done the hard work!
Good point!
Crypto equipment has always cycled out to the market cheaply, it’s just usually not super useful second hand.
The equipment that AI data centers use isn’t really usable as consumer hardware, though.
It’s like the ASIC rigs used for Bitcoin mining, not the GPU rigs.
I’m pretty confident at least their contents will flood the secondhand market with cheap secondhand gear.
What market? Certainly not the consumer hardware market…?
My Need -> eBay -> [server part search term] -> Multiple inexpensive listings with large quantities available -> Buy -> My Need Met
Replace “server part search term” with full rack servers, switches, SFP+ modules, RAM, power supplies, pulled HDDs/SSDs, and/or any other part I’ve bought used that was a corporate/data center pull.
I don’t…none of that answered my question?
“Homelab nerds” are a market unto ourselves. We get most if not all of our gear secondhand from eBay or similar, and those storefronts on ebay are run by electronics recycling companies that get their inventory from data centers or corporate offices when they shut down or do hardware refreshes.
Ohhh I see.
As for the buildings, maybe we’ll see some creative uses like indoor farms or something.
Nope, though I admire your optimism. They’ll get repurposed into concentration camps.
