• ShinkanTrain@lemmy.mlEnglish
    44·
    5 hours ago

    Gas prices should increase the cost of running data centers but when did AI ever need a profitable business model

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      26·
      5 hours ago

      Data centers in Silicon Valley stand empty, awaiting power

      One of the more curious artifacts of the recent surge in data center construction has been filling these megaliths with hardware and then… not plugging them in. Either because turning them on would flatten the local electrical grid or because they’re loss-leaders for which data cycles only cost the company money.

      So you’ve got this multi-billion dollar paper asset that wows investors while it gathers dust. And then you go off to build another one, because people will fling their unlimited borrowing power at you to reap another quarter of double-digit growth in speculative valuation.

      • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        15·
        4 hours ago

        It’s okay, Trump signed that executive order telling them to provide their own power for data centers. Which means now our tax dollars won’t just be used for data centers, they’ll be used for power plants too. Another executive order or two and we’ll see company towns come back.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          10 minutes ago

          It’s gonna be company towns with only 8 or 9 residents though. And only 2-3 will actually go into the data center.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          4 hours ago

          Which means now our tax dollars won’t just be used for data centers, they’ll be used for power plants too.

          Sure… maybe…

          Part of the problem with power plant construction is that our production capacity is largely maxed out. If you want a new gas power plant, you go on a waiting list that’s two years long (conservatively). Wind and Solar production are also at their domestic limit. Nuclear continues to be a pipe dream.

          And, again, it cannot be overstressed that turning on a data center means a net-negative cash flow. These facilities cost more to operate than they earn, even under a ludicrously generous state contract. Why would you want to power them on these terms?

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              4 hours ago

              I think some people look at this arrangement and say “This is unsustainable, the cards have to come down at some point”, because it is a fucking stupid way to run an economy.

              But, like… the money keeps flowing. And it keeps flowing because the Fed and the Treasury are implicitly backstopping the malinvestment. And their pockets are functionally endless.

              I wish you could just roll your eyes and make these abhorrent economic decisions stop. But I’m afraid these people might legit die trillionaires without a regret in the world (other than failing to solve Immortality Science with an LLM), because we’ve stacked the economic deck so high up in their favor.

              • WanderingThoughts@europe.pub
                2·
                46 minutes ago

                The pockets might be endless, but if you keep pulling stuff out without something real going in you end up pulling out handfuls of lint and nothing else.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  31 minutes ago

                  LintCoin’s value is through the roof, though. You’d be a fool not to hand them all your boring old American dollars.

                  And don’t even get me started on TulipCoin.

  • MajinBlayze@lemmy.world
    371·
    5 hours ago

    This might age poorly, but wishful thinking, I think.

    Nothing about the “AI” speculative bubble is likely to be impacted by the war in Iran.

    • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
      30·
      5 hours ago

      oil skyrocketing in price and the economy and stock market taking a huge hit could cause the investments required to prop up the bubble to run out of steam

      • MajinBlayze@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 hours ago

        The parts of the economy stock market that would be heavily impacted by oil prices are already in the gutter.

          • MajinBlayze@lemmy.world
            21·
            4 hours ago

            Segregate the market into “AI” and “non-AI” segments for simplicity.

            Looking at the thousand or so “investors” who’s money matters at this scale, there’s no point in selling “non-AI” stock to fund “AI” investments already, these markets are already low. Adding the Iran war to that isn’t changing anything. More likely, they are borrowing against existing “AI” stock and reinvesting that (oversimplification, but speaking broadly). Additionally, one of the big sources of these loans is Saudi Arabia, which benefits from the higher oil prices.

            The only other way in which oil prices impact “AI” is through energy costs, which impacts the immediate profitability of “AI”, which “investors” have shown they are unconcerned with.

            Or, to simplify,

            Nothing about the “AI” speculative bubble is likely to be impacted by the war in Iran.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        5 hours ago

        the economy and stock market taking a huge hit

        Two things that have also failed to manifest, in large part thanks to the prolific state spending following COVID.

        Keep in mind, the event that really knocked over the tower of cards in 2008 was Greenspan’s decision to raise interest rates (very sharply) in 2007. Trump’s very obviously not going to do that. If anything, he’s been working overtime to get interest rates lower, because he knows cheap money = high (raw) GDP growth and low unemployment.

        What we’re seeing isn’t recessionary. It’s a glacial shift in the economic priorities of the US, from a post-Reagan titanic banking juggernaut to a post-COVID more-WW2-style global arms depot. The US economy increasingly makes cops and bombs and machines that assist cops and bombs. And there’s no recognized upper limit for demand on these goods and services. Not under current geopolitical conditions, anyway.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      5 hours ago

      If anything, department of war spending on AI might prolong the bubble.

      • crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        4 hours ago

        Makes you wonder if that was the idea. They used AI in the Venezuela attack, too.

        There’s also the betting market that Trump is very friendly towards, and we’ve already seen bets on military strikes pop up days before anyone knew about it, so someone’s making money on insider info.

  • GorGor@startrek.website
    10·
    5 hours ago

    I’m sorry, but it really bugs me that the small domino is a fucking war. While the big domino is depicted here as the AI bubble bursting.

    At a minimum, it’s a part used to the mean, but really the priorities are just way out of whack.

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
    12·
    5 hours ago

    “What the f? we can’t even use this to kill children efficiently??” - when Sam Altman’s WarGPT fails to prove itself

    everything they like (oversized pick-up trucks, semi automatic rifles, alcohol) are used to kill children more efficiently than their alternatives

  • Hylactor@sopuli.xyz
    12·
    5 hours ago

    I think it’s more like sending a second out of control train to catch the first one. There’s no doubt eah train will crash, and that it will be bad, but now we have more variables as to which will crash first and how bad, with the exciting new possibility of each making each other worse than they would have been.