6 ms·

The AI Industry Is Lying to You

166 points by spking 7mo ago

52-6F-62 7mo ago
Pointed and excellent. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for introspection from that camp. It seems that AI maximalists, like so many other players these days, see it as end-game time. There are no bounds or rules: pick a side, and go. And then eat the rest. Sure, not everyone sees it this way. There are highly competent, human actors working in their joy toward a better way forward with all of it. But I don't think you'll find that spirit unbridled inside any profit-seeking corporation of any significant standing (though I would be happy to be proven wrong). If it existed there, it is being choked out by selfishness and survivalism. And then there's Thiel and ilk waxing eschatological, adding a whole other layer to the scheme.
0gs 7mo ago
i see him brag about how long these astroturf joints are on bluesky. had been a while since i'd tried to actually scroll through one and it makes sense now: so much more space to spawn subscription promos. better offline indeed
awakeasleep 7mo ago
An analysis of datacenter commitments and GPU purchasing through how much power they will demand vs how much is available. As someone who only has a passing interest, there isn't anything distilled enough in this article for me to comment on as the central point. Everyone seems to be reporting impossible numbers, and buying dramatically more hardware than they can install in a reasonable timeframe given the pace of the industry.
fred_is_fred 7mo ago
Railroads, e-commerce, and AI - all useful, all were (or may be) credit/stock bubbles. Railroads however have a much better depreciation schedule than GPUs.
- tootie 7mo ago
  He isn't arguing that AI is useless. Only that Nvidia is propping up a massive financial deck of cards and that all the giant numbers being tossed around are fantasies.
  - woleium 7mo ago
    It’s supply and demand, as long as the demand is there the numbers can be maintained
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    > He isn't arguing that AI is useless. This is what he said in 2024 ----- The “iPhone moment” wasn’t a result of one thing, but a collection of different bits that formed an obvious whole — one device that did a bunch of things really, really well. LLMs have no such moment, nor do they have any one thing they do well, let alone really well. LLMs are famous not for their efficacy, but their inconsistency, with even ardent AI cultists warning people not to trust their output https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/
consumer451 7mo ago
Something I heard a person say recently: > Isn't it weird how there is no huge industry pushback on all this new AI datacenter power need, as there was about electrifying vehicles?
- givemeethekeys 7mo ago
  Was there a big industry push back against looms, tractors, computers, or the internet?
  - miltonlost 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ua709 7mo ago
      I was going to cite that too but it's not exactly industry pushback, it's labor pushback. EV on the other hand does have some obvious industrial adversaries.
      - miltonlost 7mo ago
        At that time, the laborers WERE the industry?
        ua709 7mo ago
        I don't understand the question. (maybe the question mark is a mistake?) Assuming it's a statement, my guess is the rapacious capitalists would disagree with that claim.
    - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
      Personally, I enjoy not spending 15% of my salary on clothing and textiles.
      - filleduchaos 7mo ago
redwood 7mo ago
The article takes an odd turn in the second half and seems to veer from a very interesting deep-dive into how a lot of backlogged US data center production may correlate with GPU "slippage" via questionable resellers and GPU rental outfits to China
babelfish 7mo ago
[flagged]
- ua709 7mo ago
  "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
  - bdangubic 7mo ago
    "If you keep predicting market crash every single day of your life you will be the greatest predictor in the history of mankind because markets do eventually crash a little"
  - Esophagus4 7mo ago
    This is the crutch of everyone unwilling to actually put their money on the line and bet. “I think AI is a bubble and it’s going to collapse” “Ok, then there are ways to bet against it if you’re really sure” “Oh I’m sure I’m right, it’s just that the market might take a long time to realize I’m right” Come on… there was no subtlety in the article at all. He said it’s all a house of cards, it’s all going to collapse, it’s all a grift… surely someone that certain should be willing to put something in…
- miltonlost 7mo ago
  I don't think Sam Altman has made a single correct AGI prediction, despite saying AGI is a few months off. Grifters gonna grift
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    False, he made one of the most important predictions https://blog.samaltman.com/ai https://blog.samaltman.com/ai and he made it happen. Whatever you think of this person, he did the thing he predicted. That's more than most people. Calling him a grifter tells me more about you than about Sam.
    - 7mo ago
ramesh31 7mo ago
Ah yes, now that the rails are all built what could we possibly do next?
soumyaskartha 7mo ago
The lying is not even subtle anymore. The gap between the demo and the product has never been wider and people are starting to notice.
motorpixel 7mo ago
Someone please correct my math. The article says 240 Gigawatts of capacity is allocated for AI datacenters. New York City draws about 10 Gigawatts in the hottest months of the year due to extra load from AC use. So am I understanding correctly that these people want to foist upon the power grid 24 NYCs?
- mekael 7mo ago
  I’ve never thought of it in terms of “how many new metropoli(sp) are being added”, but it seems like a deceny unit of measure. If we use the average of 6gw, we’re adding essentially 40 nyc’s.
- ua709 7mo ago
  It's probably more correct to say that there are some people who project that 240GW of additional power will be required by data centers in the near future. Yes, that number is absurd, and data centers will certainly need to make do with less, regardless of actual requirements.
  - cyberge99 7mo ago
    That also fails to take efficiency and cost optimization into account. Just parsing out salutations and please/thank you from AI requests reduces utilization and that’s not really even intense optimization.
- kerblang 7mo ago
  Earlier today on the radio I heard Houston TX was 20 GW at peak load. Texas is [d]oing its best to build as many datacenters & power plants as possible. They were describing it as "Texas will have more datacenters than anyplace else in the world." This was public radio, but everybody's taking a hit on the ol' AI pipe nowadays.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- Ekaros 7mo ago
  Which running 24/365 would correspond to about half of total electricity consumption of USA... At cost of 0.01 per kwh would be 21 billion... And electricity generally is not that cheap everything considered...
wespiser_2018 7mo ago
Very good points. My current model for understand for how AI will scale out is that we'll move through the following choke points: AI chip makers -> Data center infra and construction -> regional power companies Right now we're firmly in the "AI chip makers" part of the expansion, with everything else in the beginning stages. AI is useful, but whether it's hyped or not, it's hard to deny that not being able to build and power data centers will impact how this plays out.
simianwords 7mo ago
I think the AI industry needs intelligent skeptics that keep the hype in check and ground us in reality. But Ed Zitron is not it. Here's an example [1] of him fumbling on simple arithmetic. He's also perpetually bearish without any sense of principles on his message. This is what he wrote in 2024 [2] > You can fight with me on semantics, on claiming valuations are high and how many users ChatGPT has, but look at the products and tell me any of this is really the future. I think the industry really needs someone better with principles. [1] https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034376359909130249 https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034376359909130249 [2] https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ Edit: here's another example https://x.com/blader/status/2031216372169191678 https://x.com/blader/status/2031216372169191678 I get that people make mistakes but it really does seem like there are no principles behind the guy. It seems like he can write whatever.
- CodingJeebus 7mo ago
  I personally think the fact that it's an indie reporter like Ed Zitron diving into this says a lot about the state of tech media broadly. Reminds me a bit of how sports journalism works nowadays: nobody wants to call out industry leaders for fear of losing access, because losing access is career suicide.
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    False. The current mainstream media outlets are by far the more anti technology than pro. It is unclear why you think journalists fear losing access when the status quo is opposing tech.
    - josefritzishere 7mo ago
      I disagree. I find popular media to be grossly negligent in their lack of skepticism. They love regurgitating pie-in-the-sky claims for clicks.
      - 7mo ago
jerf 7mo ago
I'm at a loss as to how some of these projects got funded in the first place. Anyone funding these should have had the perspective to see that there isn't enough power for them. Anyone funding them should have had the perspective to see that by the time power could come online for even a significant fraction of them, the depreciation and interest costs should have murdered the company trying to do it, especially if their solution to that problem is the oh-so-21st century solution of "solving" the problem of losing money by levering up. It does no good to go out of business entirely in 2027 to make the phat buxx in 2030, which seems to be the best case scenario for this space as a whole. The other question I have is... who exactly is doing all of 1. Using AI right now 2. Making substantial money on it or getting real value and 3. Capacity constrained? Who is actually going to productively soak up all this capacity? It seems to me that bringing all this stuff online can't really make things much cheaper than they are now because the fixed costs aren't going anywhere, and if anything, trying to jam so many projects through all at once just raises those fixed costs even higher. It's not like they triple data center capacity (and increasing AI capacity by, what, 10x? 20x?), stick them full of AI systems, and into that 10x+ greater AI capacity they can sell it at the prices they are now. Higher capacity would crash the selling price but the costs would be as high or higher than now. I am at a complete loss as to how the numbers are supposed to work here. You can't build a company in 2026 on the economy and tech infrastructure of 2036 anymore than it worked to build a company in 1999 on the economy and tech infrastructure of 2019, no matter how rosy the numbers look on the projections based on conveniently ignoring the fact the company passes through "death" in a year and half. Everything promised in 1999 happened, but trying to artificially accelerate it onto Wall Street's time line burned money by the billions. I'm sure 2036 will have lots of AI in it, but you can't just spend money to bring it forward 10 years by sheer force of will. It has to happen at its own pace.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  > The other question I have is... who exactly is doing all of 1. Using AI right now 2. Making substantial money on it or getting real value and 3. Capacity constrained? Almost all enterprise users for one. At least from what I have seen it is a massive productivity boost for coding and general research. If the costs were ~4x lower, we would be able to do much much more with them. Building datacenters will reduce the cost because increasing supply would reduce the cost. > It's not like they triple data center capacity (and increasing AI capacity by, what, 10x? 20x?), stick them full of AI systems, and into that 10x+ greater AI capacity they can sell it at the prices they are now. Higher capacity would crash the selling price but the costs would be as high or higher than now. This is false. Part of the costs are unit costs which are really high margin. I think the margins are around 50% to 60%. By increasing the capacity, the are bound to make even more profit. But the other part is reflecting the lack of capacity.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
smitty1e 7mo ago
The obvious answer to the power problem will be to have the AI design massively parallel exercise bicycle/electrical generator plants that can be powered by all of the people laid off by the AI. A literal "virtuous cycle", if you will.
- kikimora 7mo ago
  Why bicycle? A bath with tubes connected directly to a human body would be much better solution ;)
  - aziaziazi 7mo ago
    Too much loss and inefficiency. An in vitro ATP fuel cell feed with glucose would be more convenient with the right enzymes… but wait… glucoses will comes from plants and their own ATP uses sunlight as fuel. Replicating that would be much more cost effective than growing plants to feed animal-based ATP. Just as with food, animal intermediaries are inefficient.
consumer451 7mo ago
I have already written a comment here, apologies. However, I have something else to say other than a hot take, about Ed Zitron: I believe that Ed Zitron plays a very important gadlfy role in all of this. However, if you look at his subreddit, it appears that he has created a 100% AI denier following. My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. For those of us involved with code, Sonnet 3.5 was a revelation, and Opus 4.5 scared the crap out of many, and converted some of us to believers in "the exponential." Now, in other verifiable output fields like finance/spreadsheets in general, Claude is scaring even more people. I really do respect Ed, but I feel like his schtick might make too many people complacent, thinking that this is all fake. Also, I could be wrong.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  > My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. Why worry? Also I'm pretty sure I have seen a similar comment before
  - guzfip 7mo ago
    I think these schizophrenics are stuck in a loop.
  - consumer451 7mo ago
    > > My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. > Why worry? Because, instead of telling people that "it's all a bubble," while he might be partially correct, he is still creating a confirmation bubble following. He is creating a denialist community, where as his followers might be best served by learning how to use the tools. I am not sure about any of this. Why worry? Because if he is wrong, then there is a chance that we will be killing the animals in our zoos, to feed the people. This is something that really happened during the last "great depression." I worry about the plight of my fellow man as it affects me.
    - consumer451 7mo ago
      > Because, instead of telling people that ... I meant to write: > Because, he tells people that "it's all a bubble," while he might be partially correct, he is still creating a confirmation bubble following. He is creating a denialist community, where as his followers might be best served by learning how to use the tools.
guzfip 7mo ago
Everybody’s lying to me. Haven’t you heard: lying is a virtue now.
Esophagus4 7mo ago
Sigh. I see another impassioned, fervent cry daily about how it’s all going to collapse like a house of cards (as if smart money doesn’t know it and some podcaster is the first to realize data centers take a long time to build). But unless I missed something, I didn’t see him disclose any financial positions that would indicate him betting on the collapse he is so clearly calling for. I think that should be required to take any of these articles seriously - if your portfolio doesn’t reflect your stated opinions, your stated opinions aren’t what you really believe.
- eutropia 7mo ago
  these sorts of "your opinions must be financialized to be valid" takes are the equivalent of the middlebrow dismissal. "Smart money" is an illusion that only holds up until they do something in an area you're familiar with. Many _many_ financiers know about finances and fuckall about anything else. The claims and citations in the article stand on their own, without the additional burden of trying to make a bet based on facts in a rigged game based on mob mentality. How does one even bet against private equity data center deals??
  - Esophagus4 7mo ago
    Billions in data center deals are being done in public markets. It wouldn’t be even remotely hard to bet on. He literally called for NVIDIA GPU spending to decline. He also said he believes the true consequences of AI are the destruction of the tech industry’s software stack. If he believed any of this, there are myriad opportunities to put his money where his mouth is. But I have a feeling the author doesn’t believe it enough to do so. Which tells me all I need to know about his own opinion of his work. He used the f- word 11 times to describe a catastrophe in the making. This is engagement bait. Come on, man. How can you defend someone who wrote this: > every executive forcing their workers to use AI is a ghoul and a dullard, one that doesn’t understand what actual work looks like, likely because they’re a lazy, self-involved prick. That’s the scion exposing the deep state AI house of cards?
- bandrami 7mo ago
  You can really tell who remembers 2008 and who doesn't from comments like this
kristianp 7mo ago
It makes sense that data centres in the US can't be built at a rate to keep up with the many announcements of new capacity that are happening. It's a worry how obfuscated the numbers are, and that the hyperscalers aren't breaking out the numbers in their statutory reporting. Its true this article isn't the most concise, but it might not deserve the flagging that people are giving it on here.
random__duck 7mo ago
So, who is the grifter here ?
tim333 7mo ago
> I’m comfortable estimating that North American data center absorption — as the IT load of data centers actually turned on and in operation — was at around 3GW for 2025, which would work out to about 3.9GW of total power. > And that number is a fucking disaster. To me that number is reassuring. I was worried that all this Sam Altman plans to build 12GW per month stuff was going to fry the planet. If the whole lot so far runs on less than one Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant then that actually seems kind of reasonable. Also I'm skeptical the path to AGI is ever larger data centers - there seems much that could be done in terms of better algorithms and design. I don't think human brains update every neural connection for each word when training which is probably partly why they get by on 20W rather than 20KW.
random__duck 7mo ago
Wait, who should I be routing for ?

166 points by spking 7mo ago

Pointed and excellent. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for introspection from that camp. It seems that AI maximalists, like so many other players these days, see it as end-game time. There are no bounds or rules: pick a side, and go. And then eat the rest. Sure, not everyone sees it this way. There are highly competent, human actors working in their joy toward a better way forward with all of it. But I don't think you'll find that spirit unbridled inside any profit-seeking corporation of any significant standing (though I would be happy to be proven wrong). If it existed there, it is being choked out by selfishness and survivalism. And then there's Thiel and ilk waxing eschatological, adding a whole other layer to the scheme.

0gs 7mo ago

i see him brag about how long these astroturf joints are on bluesky. had been a while since i'd tried to actually scroll through one and it makes sense now: so much more space to spawn subscription promos. better offline indeed

awakeasleep 7mo ago

An analysis of datacenter commitments and GPU purchasing through how much power they will demand vs how much is available. As someone who only has a passing interest, there isn't anything distilled enough in this article for me to comment on as the central point. Everyone seems to be reporting impossible numbers, and buying dramatically more hardware than they can install in a reasonable timeframe given the pace of the industry.

fred_is_fred 7mo ago

Railroads, e-commerce, and AI - all useful, all were (or may be) credit/stock bubbles. Railroads however have a much better depreciation schedule than GPUs.

tootie 7mo ago
He isn't arguing that AI is useless. Only that Nvidia is propping up a massive financial deck of cards and that all the giant numbers being tossed around are fantasies.
- woleium 7mo ago
  It’s supply and demand, as long as the demand is there the numbers can be maintained
- simianwords 7mo ago
  > He isn't arguing that AI is useless. This is what he said in 2024 ----- The “iPhone moment” wasn’t a result of one thing, but a collection of different bits that formed an obvious whole — one device that did a bunch of things really, really well. LLMs have no such moment, nor do they have any one thing they do well, let alone really well. LLMs are famous not for their efficacy, but their inconsistency, with even ardent AI cultists warning people not to trust their output https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/

consumer451 7mo ago

Something I heard a person say recently: > Isn't it weird how there is no huge industry pushback on all this new AI datacenter power need, as there was about electrifying vehicles?

givemeethekeys 7mo ago
Was there a big industry push back against looms, tractors, computers, or the internet?
- miltonlost 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ua709 7mo ago
    I was going to cite that too but it's not exactly industry pushback, it's labor pushback. EV on the other hand does have some obvious industrial adversaries.
    - miltonlost 7mo ago
      At that time, the laborers WERE the industry?
      - ua709 7mo ago
        I don't understand the question. (maybe the question mark is a mistake?) Assuming it's a statement, my guess is the rapacious capitalists would disagree with that claim.
  - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    Personally, I enjoy not spending 15% of my salary on clothing and textiles.
    - filleduchaos 7mo ago

redwood 7mo ago

The article takes an odd turn in the second half and seems to veer from a very interesting deep-dive into how a lot of backlogged US data center production may correlate with GPU "slippage" via questionable resellers and GPU rental outfits to China

babelfish 7mo ago

[flagged]

ua709 7mo ago
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
- bdangubic 7mo ago
  "If you keep predicting market crash every single day of your life you will be the greatest predictor in the history of mankind because markets do eventually crash a little"
- Esophagus4 7mo ago
  This is the crutch of everyone unwilling to actually put their money on the line and bet. “I think AI is a bubble and it’s going to collapse” “Ok, then there are ways to bet against it if you’re really sure” “Oh I’m sure I’m right, it’s just that the market might take a long time to realize I’m right” Come on… there was no subtlety in the article at all. He said it’s all a house of cards, it’s all going to collapse, it’s all a grift… surely someone that certain should be willing to put something in…
miltonlost 7mo ago
I don't think Sam Altman has made a single correct AGI prediction, despite saying AGI is a few months off. Grifters gonna grift
- simianwords 7mo ago
  False, he made one of the most important predictions https://blog.samaltman.com/ai https://blog.samaltman.com/ai and he made it happen. Whatever you think of this person, he did the thing he predicted. That's more than most people. Calling him a grifter tells me more about you than about Sam.
  - 7mo ago

ramesh31 7mo ago

Ah yes, now that the rails are all built what could we possibly do next?

soumyaskartha 7mo ago

The lying is not even subtle anymore. The gap between the demo and the product has never been wider and people are starting to notice.

motorpixel 7mo ago

Someone please correct my math. The article says 240 Gigawatts of capacity is allocated for AI datacenters. New York City draws about 10 Gigawatts in the hottest months of the year due to extra load from AC use. So am I understanding correctly that these people want to foist upon the power grid 24 NYCs?

mekael 7mo ago
I’ve never thought of it in terms of “how many new metropoli(sp) are being added”, but it seems like a deceny unit of measure. If we use the average of 6gw, we’re adding essentially 40 nyc’s.
ua709 7mo ago
It's probably more correct to say that there are some people who project that 240GW of additional power will be required by data centers in the near future. Yes, that number is absurd, and data centers will certainly need to make do with less, regardless of actual requirements.
- cyberge99 7mo ago
  That also fails to take efficiency and cost optimization into account. Just parsing out salutations and please/thank you from AI requests reduces utilization and that’s not really even intense optimization.
kerblang 7mo ago
Earlier today on the radio I heard Houston TX was 20 GW at peak load. Texas is [d]oing its best to build as many datacenters & power plants as possible. They were describing it as "Texas will have more datacenters than anyplace else in the world." This was public radio, but everybody's taking a hit on the ol' AI pipe nowadays.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Ekaros 7mo ago
Which running 24/365 would correspond to about half of total electricity consumption of USA... At cost of 0.01 per kwh would be 21 billion... And electricity generally is not that cheap everything considered...

wespiser_2018 7mo ago

Very good points. My current model for understand for how AI will scale out is that we'll move through the following choke points: AI chip makers -> Data center infra and construction -> regional power companies Right now we're firmly in the "AI chip makers" part of the expansion, with everything else in the beginning stages. AI is useful, but whether it's hyped or not, it's hard to deny that not being able to build and power data centers will impact how this plays out.

simianwords 7mo ago

I think the AI industry needs intelligent skeptics that keep the hype in check and ground us in reality. But Ed Zitron is not it. Here's an example [1] of him fumbling on simple arithmetic. He's also perpetually bearish without any sense of principles on his message. This is what he wrote in 2024 [2] > You can fight with me on semantics, on claiming valuations are high and how many users ChatGPT has, but look at the products and tell me any of this is really the future. I think the industry really needs someone better with principles. [1] https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034376359909130249 https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034376359909130249 [2] https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forget-what-theyve-done/ Edit: here's another example https://x.com/blader/status/2031216372169191678 https://x.com/blader/status/2031216372169191678 I get that people make mistakes but it really does seem like there are no principles behind the guy. It seems like he can write whatever.

CodingJeebus 7mo ago
I personally think the fact that it's an indie reporter like Ed Zitron diving into this says a lot about the state of tech media broadly. Reminds me a bit of how sports journalism works nowadays: nobody wants to call out industry leaders for fear of losing access, because losing access is career suicide.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  False. The current mainstream media outlets are by far the more anti technology than pro. It is unclear why you think journalists fear losing access when the status quo is opposing tech.
  - josefritzishere 7mo ago
    I disagree. I find popular media to be grossly negligent in their lack of skepticism. They love regurgitating pie-in-the-sky claims for clicks.
    - 7mo ago

jerf 7mo ago

I'm at a loss as to how some of these projects got funded in the first place. Anyone funding these should have had the perspective to see that there isn't enough power for them. Anyone funding them should have had the perspective to see that by the time power could come online for even a significant fraction of them, the depreciation and interest costs should have murdered the company trying to do it, especially if their solution to that problem is the oh-so-21st century solution of "solving" the problem of losing money by levering up. It does no good to go out of business entirely in 2027 to make the phat buxx in 2030, which seems to be the best case scenario for this space as a whole. The other question I have is... who exactly is doing all of 1. Using AI right now 2. Making substantial money on it or getting real value and 3. Capacity constrained? Who is actually going to productively soak up all this capacity? It seems to me that bringing all this stuff online can't really make things much cheaper than they are now because the fixed costs aren't going anywhere, and if anything, trying to jam so many projects through all at once just raises those fixed costs even higher. It's not like they triple data center capacity (and increasing AI capacity by, what, 10x? 20x?), stick them full of AI systems, and into that 10x+ greater AI capacity they can sell it at the prices they are now. Higher capacity would crash the selling price but the costs would be as high or higher than now. I am at a complete loss as to how the numbers are supposed to work here. You can't build a company in 2026 on the economy and tech infrastructure of 2036 anymore than it worked to build a company in 1999 on the economy and tech infrastructure of 2019, no matter how rosy the numbers look on the projections based on conveniently ignoring the fact the company passes through "death" in a year and half. Everything promised in 1999 happened, but trying to artificially accelerate it onto Wall Street's time line burned money by the billions. I'm sure 2036 will have lots of AI in it, but you can't just spend money to bring it forward 10 years by sheer force of will. It has to happen at its own pace.

simianwords 7mo ago
> The other question I have is... who exactly is doing all of 1. Using AI right now 2. Making substantial money on it or getting real value and 3. Capacity constrained? Almost all enterprise users for one. At least from what I have seen it is a massive productivity boost for coding and general research. If the costs were ~4x lower, we would be able to do much much more with them. Building datacenters will reduce the cost because increasing supply would reduce the cost. > It's not like they triple data center capacity (and increasing AI capacity by, what, 10x? 20x?), stick them full of AI systems, and into that 10x+ greater AI capacity they can sell it at the prices they are now. Higher capacity would crash the selling price but the costs would be as high or higher than now. This is false. Part of the costs are unit costs which are really high margin. I think the margins are around 50% to 60%. By increasing the capacity, the are bound to make even more profit. But the other part is reflecting the lack of capacity.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

smitty1e 7mo ago

The obvious answer to the power problem will be to have the AI design massively parallel exercise bicycle/electrical generator plants that can be powered by all of the people laid off by the AI. A literal "virtuous cycle", if you will.

kikimora 7mo ago
Why bicycle? A bath with tubes connected directly to a human body would be much better solution ;)
- aziaziazi 7mo ago
  Too much loss and inefficiency. An in vitro ATP fuel cell feed with glucose would be more convenient with the right enzymes… but wait… glucoses will comes from plants and their own ATP uses sunlight as fuel. Replicating that would be much more cost effective than growing plants to feed animal-based ATP. Just as with food, animal intermediaries are inefficient.

consumer451 7mo ago

I have already written a comment here, apologies. However, I have something else to say other than a hot take, about Ed Zitron: I believe that Ed Zitron plays a very important gadlfy role in all of this. However, if you look at his subreddit, it appears that he has created a 100% AI denier following. My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. For those of us involved with code, Sonnet 3.5 was a revelation, and Opus 4.5 scared the crap out of many, and converted some of us to believers in "the exponential." Now, in other verifiable output fields like finance/spreadsheets in general, Claude is scaring even more people. I really do respect Ed, but I feel like his schtick might make too many people complacent, thinking that this is all fake. Also, I could be wrong.

simianwords 7mo ago
> My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. Why worry? Also I'm pretty sure I have seen a similar comment before
- guzfip 7mo ago
  I think these schizophrenics are stuck in a loop.
- consumer451 7mo ago
  > > My gut makes me worry for them, but I wonder where the truth really lies. > Why worry? Because, instead of telling people that "it's all a bubble," while he might be partially correct, he is still creating a confirmation bubble following. He is creating a denialist community, where as his followers might be best served by learning how to use the tools. I am not sure about any of this. Why worry? Because if he is wrong, then there is a chance that we will be killing the animals in our zoos, to feed the people. This is something that really happened during the last "great depression." I worry about the plight of my fellow man as it affects me.
  - consumer451 7mo ago
    > Because, instead of telling people that ... I meant to write: > Because, he tells people that "it's all a bubble," while he might be partially correct, he is still creating a confirmation bubble following. He is creating a denialist community, where as his followers might be best served by learning how to use the tools.

guzfip 7mo ago

Everybody’s lying to me. Haven’t you heard: lying is a virtue now.

Esophagus4 7mo ago

Sigh. I see another impassioned, fervent cry daily about how it’s all going to collapse like a house of cards (as if smart money doesn’t know it and some podcaster is the first to realize data centers take a long time to build). But unless I missed something, I didn’t see him disclose any financial positions that would indicate him betting on the collapse he is so clearly calling for. I think that should be required to take any of these articles seriously - if your portfolio doesn’t reflect your stated opinions, your stated opinions aren’t what you really believe.

eutropia 7mo ago
these sorts of "your opinions must be financialized to be valid" takes are the equivalent of the middlebrow dismissal. "Smart money" is an illusion that only holds up until they do something in an area you're familiar with. Many _many_ financiers know about finances and fuckall about anything else. The claims and citations in the article stand on their own, without the additional burden of trying to make a bet based on facts in a rigged game based on mob mentality. How does one even bet against private equity data center deals??
- Esophagus4 7mo ago
  Billions in data center deals are being done in public markets. It wouldn’t be even remotely hard to bet on. He literally called for NVIDIA GPU spending to decline. He also said he believes the true consequences of AI are the destruction of the tech industry’s software stack. If he believed any of this, there are myriad opportunities to put his money where his mouth is. But I have a feeling the author doesn’t believe it enough to do so. Which tells me all I need to know about his own opinion of his work. He used the f- word 11 times to describe a catastrophe in the making. This is engagement bait. Come on, man. How can you defend someone who wrote this: > every executive forcing their workers to use AI is a ghoul and a dullard, one that doesn’t understand what actual work looks like, likely because they’re a lazy, self-involved prick. That’s the scion exposing the deep state AI house of cards?
bandrami 7mo ago
You can really tell who remembers 2008 and who doesn't from comments like this

kristianp 7mo ago

It makes sense that data centres in the US can't be built at a rate to keep up with the many announcements of new capacity that are happening. It's a worry how obfuscated the numbers are, and that the hyperscalers aren't breaking out the numbers in their statutory reporting. Its true this article isn't the most concise, but it might not deserve the flagging that people are giving it on here.

random__duck 7mo ago

So, who is the grifter here ?

tim333 7mo ago

> I’m comfortable estimating that North American data center absorption — as the IT load of data centers actually turned on and in operation — was at around 3GW for 2025, which would work out to about 3.9GW of total power. > And that number is a fucking disaster. To me that number is reassuring. I was worried that all this Sam Altman plans to build 12GW per month stuff was going to fry the planet. If the whole lot so far runs on less than one Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant then that actually seems kind of reasonable. Also I'm skeptical the path to AGI is ever larger data centers - there seems much that could be done in terms of better algorithms and design. I don't think human brains update every neural connection for each word when training which is probably partly why they get by on 20W rather than 20KW.

random__duck 7mo ago

Wait, who should I be routing for ?