AI crash wen.
Fuck AI
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Bubble pop when song end
Good. Let them all die
Good.....good.......
"Looks like RAM is back on the menu, Boys!"
why did i read this in chief wiggum's voice
Good news. That is a lot of resources put forward for nothing more then a shiny new piece of tech which is mostly used as a toy.
This is how monetary policy works, new debt inflates a large bubble, it fails, then they bail it out. This usually leaves a bunch of infrastructure behind, but the bailouts poof that bad investment out of existence because it was all fake money to begin with. Powell has said this many times about the dotcom bubble.
Wish it was all of em!
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good
probably the ones that arnt going to be built in INDIA, or somewhere in asia, where theres even less regulation.
good
good news, and good for the environment.
It seems like a lot of you expect this to be like, generally a good thing. It's good in that any hindrance on capitalist destruction of land is good, but they don't retreat unless it is necessary. They see that the growth will not match speculation, but that speculation is the value and they already use the wealth created from it. Capitalists depend on infinite growth, if they can't materialise the value of AI to realise that speculative value, they will extract from elsewhere.
They're telegraphing that they intend to take more from you to make up for this.
Who knew that spending billions of dollars to put a cognitive shit generator into every corner of the world was a bad investment?
I agree, but this isn't that shoe falling yet.
This is a bunch of people that don't have experience assuming everything will work and lots of little things not coming together derailing all this stuff. No water, inadequate power, a lack of some local contractors, a disgruntled community, some permitting problem. Any one of these problems surprising them and many many millions of dollars of stuff suddenly in limbo....
Ok, so they bought billions of dollars of ram/storage, to put inside servers that haven't been bought yet, to put inside data centers that haven't been built yet, in order to run AI that doesn't work yet, in order to chase profits that are impossible to achieve.
And now, despite driving ram prices up to absurd prices, you've begun to realize the same thing all of us knew from before day one. NOBODY WANTS THIS SHIT!!!
None of that RAM (or the GPUs) have been purchased. All that is just letters of intent or even flimsier agreements, there’s no contracts or actual money changing hands.
Doesn't matter, they've captured the entire supply chain which was their goal.
This is not about AGI... its about monopolizing the future of computing.
Fucking Ed Zitron stated very loudly and very clearly for basically the last year that this was happening or would happen.
He "scooped" all of this by actually running the numbers, talking to sources, and not acting as a middle part of a human centipede for AI news and hype.
Ed and his colleague Robert Evans are on the precipice of being the Cassandra’s of our era
Uplifting News
Here in Springfield IL we just had a city meeting.
4 hours long. They let anyone talk who wanted to. And you could even go twice (with 2 min limits ).
I really respected that.
Most counsel is Republican. Which is concerning.
We did manage to get them to table the vote after it came to light that the water they were planning on using is slated to come from a local lake that is already in the deficit (waterly lake).
And that they filed the wrong zoning. They filed it as agriculture.
But want to hear something super shitty. ?
About 1/5 of the people there ,(packed house with people standing) were from local unions in support of the data center.
These data center fuckers have been going to local unions and telling them how it's going to give them all jobs and all this b.s.
And a lot of speakers mentioned how low it was for the billionaire companies to turn our union members against their own communities.
There was only like 5 of them that spoke and they honestly sounded like selfish pricks.
One guy said the centers were going up rather we liked it or not so why not get the money.
Another said he didn't care if AI made other people lose their jobs because his job was more important.
Another idiot , in response to an example of a previous company who left asbestos that needed cleaned up, that the city had to pay for said "I worked on that clean up and it was good money".
Yeah. Really did not help their image. I was super disappointed in them.
They really think these data center companies are their buddy.
Also. Sangamon county can't provide the power they need. So they were planning on putting like 50 diesel generators that would run 24/7.
I can't believe the council members were ready to allow this.
Someone there also said the company had been threatening to sue council members if they didn't pass it. The speaker reminder them that we would sue them if they did. And investigate their finances like others are doing already in other cities with these awful data centers.
Not a data center, but this sounds very reminiscent of a fight I was in the middle of in 2024-2025. If you've heard of Coney Island, a vulture capitalist named Thor Equities was seeking to demolish the heart of it to build a casino, at the same time as two other casino proposals in NYC. Naturally, they pissed off entire artist communities. We railed against it, we attended every 4 hour community hearing, and we were eventually able to convince them to vote against it.
But at the same time, Thor Equities was literally bussing in people and paying them to feign support for the casino. They would show up in coach busses with matching tshirts and talk endlessly about the magical "job creation". It felt like an episode of Parks and Rec
It's dystopian that they can do this shit.
Going SUPER LOCAL with our politics is the only way to fuck these data centers up ... every county in the US should be voting these things down
You would have thought the Union guys might have asked how many jobs the data center was going to create. As from what I can see it's a handful.
They were throwing around "500" for 5-6 years.
But as someone else pointed out in the meeting. The contract doesn't say they will guarantee hiring anyone local nor any specific number.
And that the only reason they are floating the idea of using union workers in the first place is for the tax breaks.
They get like a 20 year tax break from using union to build.
But as someone else pointed out in the meeting. The contract doesn’t say they will guarantee hiring anyone local nor any specific number.
What I've seen is a lot of moving people from outside the area. Suddenly every apartment is full with wait lists since tiny rural areas can't really handle the sudden flood of people. I'm sure the roads aren't generally ready for it either and since its only short-term, any development based on the influx is unsustainable if those people move away once the project is done...
Someone asked if they were planning on using the train railways to bring in building materials.
We already have problems with freight trains as they run through the area 24/7.
They made a 2ndary rail line a few years ago that still runs through part of Springfield. (More north vs the original that literally ran through downtown). But the two lines still converge. So we still get train congestion all the time.
Thry often stop and sit on the tracks for long periods of time. Half hour or so.
There have been a few incidents where emergency services couldn't get to rural people from being blocked in by trains.
So that's a concern. We don't need more people blocked off by more trains.
Plus the North train line was put through a poor black neighborhood. That's a whole other deal.
Super shitty.
It was obviously chosen to go against people with the least power to fight back. The burden of the trains are mostly now on poor blacks. So they would get even more train traffic if trains are used for the data center.
...I looked up Sangamon county, and it seems like the perfect place to build a data center. It's in the middle of nowhere and it's economy is non-existent. Pretty much the only thing it has is a lot of flat land.
Note: Sorry if I violated the rules with this comment. I didn't see what sub I was posting in.
Well the state capitol is here. Lincoln is buried here.
But yeah it's definitely rural around Springfield so that probably is why it's being targeted. Plus we have a power plant. Although it is coal powered.
We definitely don't need any extra pollution. And the farm land is being used for farming.
Farming communities also tend to have access to large volumes of fresh water and a well developed system to move it.
Water we need for ourselves. Certainly.