As I was using LLMs at work (I never use LLMs for personal projects), a question occurred to me:
What in the fuck are these new data centers supposed to actually do?
The enterprise users are all in on having LLMs write 300% of the code. And yet, both OpenAI and Anthropic are still giving these “$200 gets you $10 000 in API costs” subscriptions to every victim of AI psychosis.
Why do we have RAM, hard disk, SSD, GPU and CPU shortages and no “token shortage”?
I mean, we all know the answer, these are the offerings for the robot god, but like how in the fuck are they still obtaining loans for this shit?
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I think it is a combination of VCs really believing this is the next big gold rush and radical innovation which will change the world plus a few true believers who think we need all the … compute (I dislike the word) to run the acausalrobotgod who will fix all our problems (and ‘We’ need to prepare so China doesnt build it first).
To go back to the first group, when they say ‘dont get left behind’ they are bot addressing you or me, but other capitalists (as in people with money, not just people who believe the ideology is best)
Edit: wow this question attracted a lot of conspiracy theorists.
I’m purging the worst of the conspiracy theorists (which I’m sure they’ll love)
I considered posting a reminder that we do analysis here, not weirdo daydreaming, but fuck it anyone who doesn’t know where the line is deserves a ban
There is also a token shortage, Anthropic at least started noticeably throttling users like 6ish months ago.
Not saying there is demand at API price points since the majority of use still comes from sub’s, but still.
mass surveillance, and dynamic pricing/ad targeting.
It’s a bubble in a specific subcategory of commercial real estate, and commercial real estate usually eats shit first when a recession hits. The tech essentially serves the same purpose as American consumer credit did in the runup to 2008, just one step removed.
My theory is that the data centers are just shell companies for farming tax credits. The various gov officials are all NDA’d and can’t won’t say what kind of deals they cut nor the kickbacks they’re harvesting.
They are for training new models, not running existing ones
My personal conspiracy theory is the AI companies are being used as a front for a new Manhattan Project for the surveillance dragnet. All those flock camera feeds gotta go somewhere. Imagine being able to look up who, what, where, and when (and infer why) for any person or place in the US, linking online interaction to physical places in near-real time.
Here’s who it’s being built for.
ETA: What I see happening over the next decade, the AI bubble ‘pops,’ government quietly absorbs the (by then) mostly complete facilities and hardware as part of the bailout, then news outlets go silent about data centers and ICE activity while we fall deeper into a fascist hellpit.
Imagine Hitler’s reign, but this time there will be no Anne Frank’s.
I think you’re right. There is this constant need for governments and the elite in general to keep tabs on the population. They need to detect dissidents that arranges protests, generate push back, are whistleblowers and just people who are somehow a threat to their power structures. Our online activities through phones and computers are presumably already surveilled and is used to profile us. Your LG tv is listening to everything you say by the way and I’m sure they are not alone. That combined with camera footage of physical activity/presence just fortifies their hold on the population further.
specially any progressive movement needs to outmunevered and quashed before it gets too large. both the DINOs and gop do not want a united front of voters against them.
Because the rich people that have invested into it want AI to be too big to fail. That way we’re forced to keep moving forward on AI, and the rich can achieve their dream of not paying workers.
For the rich to create a panopticon to keep us In check…and also to charge for knowledge they did not earn or work for
They pre buy the memory stock years in advance with IOU money.
Paying contractors
Im like 99% sure those are the only people profiting here. Data center electricians make bank to do mostly brain dead copy-paste underground
Basically the sole silver lining I see in our slopocalypse is that some portion of the fortunes being incinerated is moving money from finance parasites back to actual people. Some of it.
An electrician acquaintance of mine was on a gig early in the year essentially building open-air server racks that were then covered with huge tents, a la Tesla’s long-standing “temporary” structure in Fremont. I would never have believed him if he hadn’t taken pictures and video.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theory, but after the Russian bot farm thing I think this is a race to have the means to Astro turf the Internet for propaganda.
I think we are going to end up with infranetworks, regionally and nationally to avoid this. And I fear that the only way to confirm that someone is not a bot soon will be ID or some sort of biometrics. I think this is a controversial take, but I’d support a non-anonymous internet/social media alternative if it meant everyone I talk to is a human.
As for a more optimistic take…. I’m sure there’s a lot of complex science shit that instead of actually mindfully researching and experimenting with, can instead just be brute forced. Kinda like those videos where they train “AI” to play racing games or Mario levels, but letting it randomly attempt it thousands of times — and eventually it even beats humans playing it in time and efficiency. Maybe we can use AI to generate more efficient machines?….
I think we are at the point where AI would be okay enough to do simple shit like simplified farm and factory work, low stakes stuff where it fucking up can’t actually have that severe of consequences. That’d require sweeping economical and social reforms to tackle unemployment, and that’s too optimistic for me. This probably won’t get us to a post scarcity society, but it could make a lot of things very trivial and cheap… if introduced ethically. There might be a point where there’s a lot of people that won’t/can’t get a job, many that shouldn’t need to get a job, and what to do with them. Not everyone can be the guy that fixes and builds the AI. Maybe being unemployed will become not a big deal
that’s great thanks
If the Russian Bot Farm thing you’re talking about is Ukraine bombing a data center and seeing 90% fewer right wing posts, I regret to inform you that it wasn’t accurate [bluesky thread source]
The bots they were talking about were search crawler bots from Yandex. Actual Twitter/X bots saw no change in traffic.
Admitted speculation:
I did, however, notice of my own accord that I had 4 days with zero scam calls instead of my usual 10-15, which in retrospect looking back corresponds with when a bunch of Russian services went down. I suspect that the automated crawlers and VOIP systems and aggregators perform a background hum of utility for scam and troll services that makes them much less effective in their absence.
There was likely some overlap, but there was no major network shakeup like some people were claiming.
Removed by mod
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If you’re a genuine socialist: stop this. You’re doing an Elders of Zion.
