The AI boom
They misspelled “bubble.” None of the AI providers have a path towards profitability.
None of the AI providers have customers. They’re all selling to OpenAI.
I assume they’ll do the same as the auto industry and banks and get huge government bailouts once investors start demanding returns. That way all us taxpayers can make sure the scammers at the top don’t have to spend one second worrying about giving up their lavish lifestyles.
I mean we’re (we as in local taxpayers, not me personally in this case) already paying for the infrastructure they use in increased bills. We’re paying for their tax holidays while they’re talking about all the new jobs they’ll bring (lots of short term construction, 25-50 long term employees once the tax holiday runs out, so very little money in the local economy). We (all of us) are paying the price for the mothballed coal plants that are coming back online to support them. We are paying for federal government contracts on them.
It’s corporate welfare all the way down.
Classic capitalist trap. AI is a service that was never meant to be profitable. AI is bringing tech bros into socialism.
They only want to socialize the costs and negative externalities.
Or hype.
Uhhh… I won’t comment on the other stuff but I can confidently say the electrician that comes to your house is not the electrician who is wiring these data centers. Completely different crews.
It’s also weird to single out electricians when it’s the construction companies themselves that are being dragged across the globe to the few places that will auto stamp new data centers. There’s a private compound in the Western US that doesn’t allow reporters and is blowing millions to bring workers in from thousand of miles away. Rumor is local crews weren’t considered because they’d be more likely to report environmental concerns in their own backyard.
Huh, where’s that?
Last data center I was on outside Cheyenne, WY there were about 100 iron workers from Texas doing their thing.
Fernley, details these days are hard to find since the tech companies started moving in.
https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/2019/jul/12/45-million-industrial-sale-closes-in-fernley-secon/
While you are not wrong about these different specialities within the trade, there can still be an effect. Let me illustrate:
Suppose you like bananas but not apples. One day there is an apple disease that kills most of the apple trees leading to a collapse of the apple market. You feel relieved because you don’t eat bananas anyways. But you go to the supermarket and find that not only are the apple shelves empty, the banana shelves are empty too! Why? Well people still gotta eat, and not everyone is as picky as you, they switched to bananas and now the banana market is under supplied too. And it’s not like you can build a banana farm overnight.
Back to electricians, if the salaries of data center electricians increases rapidly, you will find that those electricians who are qualified for both (even if it is just a very small number) might focus on data centres, straining the supply of residential electricians. Just like with banana orchards, it takes time for new electricians to enter the market, and those new hires will further be swayed to the data center specialty first, further straining the residential market.
We can see a real example of this with the price of RAM. RAM manufacturers saw increased demand for data centre RAM so they switched focus to that market and it ended up drying out the consumer side supply, hence the surge in price. And just as with banana plantations and electricians, you can’t start up a RAM fab overnight.
wut? A Residential Wireman doesn’t even go into the space for Inside Wireman. Then there’s the fact that the space where an Inside Wireman works is tiny compared to the rest of the data center.
What are you basing your opinion on?
edit: bunch of butthurt Residential Wiremen in this thread apparently
Oh, so Residential never switch, got it.
They need more training
edit: I’m done with this. It’s obvious that the people arguing with me have no idea what construction work is like.
Imagine how improved things would be if that $700 billion was spent improving the lives of regular people. Or, what if it was just used to pay the debt through taxes? Medicare for all? They clearly had the money and sqandered it.
Surely it’ll trickle down this time?
Any second now. Maybe just one more tax cut for the rich just to be safe.
/s
Oh, they do trickle down on ya! Not with what want ya though
Anyone remember which country had an inflation so bad, it issued trillion dollar bills useful only as toilet paper?
Hyperinflation in Germany after WW1? But I think there must be more examples.
They hadn’t mastered the Argentinian custom of changing currency to remove zeros.
IIRC it was Zimbabwe?
Just crash and burn already… Idiot timeline
I work in procurement and the last week and a half at work has been hell. Buying anything that contains RAM, Hard drives or GPUs right now is a circus. Pricing changing after orders placed, 6+ month lead times, insanely expensive pricing and any other problem you can imagine. It’s not just a problem for consumers, but businesses that need hardware refreshes, startups that are trying to launch, and replacements for defective units are all just really hard to get right now. I know this will pass eventually, but it’s a tough time to be in procurement for IT hardware.
I work for an OEM and the sales dudes have been getting reamed by our customers because they’ve had to deliver this news to folks like you. Sucks all around.
I bet those sales douches are happy with the bonuses they will get.
I don’t like sales dudes.
We’re not really raising prices above costs, in fact we’re eating a lot of the cost increases ourselves to flatten the overall increase across the board that ends up with our customers. But a lot of them already made commitments to buy that we have to raise the price on through no fault of our own. And more are coming. So I don’t think the sales dudes are seeing any benefit tbh. Though you’re right to not like them.
I feel like tulips are the next big thing.
Massive opportunity cost. People will say that could have been spent on social programs and I agree but realistically that can’t happen until voters stop being manipulated sheeple and wake the fuck up. Which in the USA is never. Brainwashed and neutered.
Until then that capital could have been invested in other industries, creating sustainable jobs and long term economic growth. But it is tied up in a bubble and a huge amount of wealth will be destroyed, invested in rapidly depreciating equipment and data centres that have no prospect of returning their investment.
If you thought it was hard to source computer parts at reasonable prices, imagine what the capital market must be like for anyone but the AI con artists. So when AI tanks, everything else is in limp mode, so the economy will be doubly fucked.
This is called Dutch Disease and most often happens with natural resources, but also with natural stupidity.
Shoukd I start selling tulip seeds?
just burst already please rahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Man, good thing phones are really good and can be held onto for a while. Not getting all crappy after a year.
ive had mine for 3.5 years and its still good as new. lasts me two days of light use.
edit - its a motorolla, ive never had such good battery life with any samsung
Wait why would I not find electrician?
