Data centers' 'oh s–t' moment(politico.com) |
Data centers' 'oh s–t' moment(politico.com) |
"look, we made this thing that's going to put everyone out of work, or destroy 99% of the planet except those of us who have built bunkers, leveraged a massive bet on the entire economy over it, if we're wrong we get bailed out by YOU, and guess what, it's coming to a neighborhood near you!"
and they are surprised at the backlash or that people are tossing molotovs at them? It's just crazy to me the kind of bubble one must live in to not see this coming from a mile away.
(IMO the environmental impact of datacenters has been pretty overblown. Water usage is a concern in some places for some datacenters but it's really not a big issue for most of them, the main thing that has some merit on a larger scale is the electricity demand, but the concerns are largely around very optimistic projections of growth of datacenters, not how much they are using today)
Whether or not you believe they are being genuine or this is true is irrelevant. Either a) they’re full of shit, so why should I believe you have my best interests in mind when you build this big datacenter, or b) you’re not full of shit, and also why should I believe you have my best interests in mind when you’re building the thing you’re saying will end us all, and especially people like me?
Given Meta's (and also Mark's) reputation, I wonder how much that is helping the cause and how much its opponents...
I saw some comments from people against a proposed data center at the site of an old power plant. I pointed out that it was a mile from anything. Someone replied saying that that was still too close, and that they wouldn't want to live 50 miles from a data center.
We are 20 miles from Ashburn.
The mask has been slipping for a while, but a combination of Trump getting elected and AI psychosis has lead to a lot of premature celebration over their belief in being the new masters of the permanent underclass. Now the the mask is completely off and revealed them for the disgusting reptiles they have always been.
Assuming demand keeps up, owners of already-existing data centers continue to get windfall profits.
It would be like what happens when housing prices go up due to lack of supply.
For one potential path - Less datacenter construction means less GPUs, so less $$$ for Nvidia, which means less for them to spread around to prop up the LLM industrial complex, which means lower valuations, which means OpenAI and Anthropic can't get their trillion dollar valuations, which means VC's race for the exit to cash out, etc, etc.
The housing bubble was people borrowing money (debt-fueled) to buy ever more expensive houses (rising asset prices) on the assumption home values would always keep going up (projection of future value).
'90s tech bubble was similar.
Where are you seeing that now? Which asset is over-valued?
OpenAI and Anthropic are not very profitable (yet!), but rely mostly on equity financing, not debt. So no debt load issue there either.
What is NVIDIA's outlook should their customers' funding run out? Or what's the long tail outlook on Google killing its search product?
OpenAI and Anthropic not making money would be sad for their shareholders, but that's sort of a different topic from whether the "debt load" you originally cited will be any kind of a systemic problem (it won't).