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?

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    They will just turn all the empty space inside into detention centers and keep all of us locked up.

  • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • Psiczar@aussie.zone
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    19 hours ago

    AI isn’t going away, there may be some consolidation of providers and right sizing of costs but AI is here to stay. Too many big companies have invested too much for it to fail.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      18 hours ago

      The operating costs of AI are prohibitively expensive even by the standards of US military budgets, and they are not the utility we were promised. Companies were told they could replace their entire workforce with AI and not only is that not true but now the subscription costs are going up.

      It doesn’t matter how much consolidating you do the product still isn’t compelling and it’s still expensive as hell to operate.

      • Redfugee@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Anthropic is expected to post a profit next quarter, it may prohibitively expensive to run but that doesn’t mean it can’t be profitable. But who knows, maybe they won’t.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          17 hours ago

          I read somewhere that for every $1 they’re taking in in cash they’re spending $100 in operating costs. If they charge the amount of money they would need to charge in order to actually have net income they wouldn’t have any customers.

          • Redfugee@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            We’ll see if they post a profit or not but if they do then your source was probably an AI hallucination.

      • Psiczar@aussie.zone
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        18 hours ago

        I’m not saying changes aren’t coming, if they can’t make a profit off it then they’ll need to adapt or die. So it will either get more expensive or more efficient, but I don’t believe the bubble will burst and there will suddenly be a fire sale on cheap data centres or their hardware.

        • fishy@lemmy.today
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          17 hours ago

          The issue is really the use cases for AI have been way overblown. The AI companies sold it as an employee replacer. “It’ll cost pennies on the dollar, have better accuracy, and doesn’t need time off!” That’s not actually what it is though. Companies are coming to terms with AI being more expensive, less accurate, and dumb.

          A piece of software I use at work is a great example and they barely oversold the capabilities. The software has a built in AI assistant which is pretty good at pointing you in the right direction to get the result you want. Then some genius realized it could also pull report data, so they removed some metric options from the reports and now I have to spend significantly longer prompting the AI to pull the metrics I want in a usable format. This is also far more computing power. So they decided to let you link other AI agents to their software so you could use another bigger model for “better results” (they don’t want to pay for all that AI themselves). Nobody bit, nobody linked to another AI because nobody wants to pay more. They’re quietly adding those metrics back to the reports now.

    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      When its really AI and turns into something mature and clearly useful I will use it. Until they come up with real AI I will continue to point and laugh.

  • WhatISawInTheWoods@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • GarboDog@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      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

  • Asafum@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    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

  • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        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.

    • leadore@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      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.

      • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        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.

        • leadore@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          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.