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?
A lot of green growth, as we die off from the aftermath of what they did.
Datacenters aren’t only used for AI. They could be used for cloud gaming, or in general for hardware-as-a-service models as a capitalist solution to high hardware prices for consumers.
Or just good old server hosting.
I’ve heard these can’t be repurposed as general servers, but I don’t know enough about it to say if that’s accurate.
I mean, disposable vapes can be repurposed as servers, it’s just a matter of how much compromises you’re willing to make
Hardware can’t, but the DCs definitely can. Their power and cooling capabilities will be over engineered for what you need but you can combat that by turning off excess capacity. It already has the base of what you need for normal DCs: space, Cooling, power and internet with corresponding redundancies.
Oh just wait and see, you’ll find out how fast people will come along and scrap the metal and scavenge the RAM and other parts…
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
2008 with hardware.
Hardware that dies in 5 years. At least the houses are still around assuming they didn’t get wiped out with those fires
American houses are built with cardboard paper, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been destroyed by now.
I hate that this is actually pretty accurate, depending on which contractor you go with.
Whole neighborhoods were built during the housing bubble that had contaminated drywall (gypsum board) with sulfate VOCs that had to be gutted or torn down completely.
This is the most accurate assessment of the situation I have heard thus far.
Make them detention camps for MAGA traitors and pedophiles.
They are disposable. Meta is deploying them in tents. Elements of the infrastructure like power generation and heat management could be made durable, but I imagine that isn’t a huge cost compared to replacing the entire guts of the thing every generation.
There’s no AI crash coming. It’s pure copium.
Why has the tech become affordable and useful all of a sudden?
It’s extremely useful and is affordable enough for people who can actually make use of it.
So all these companies that replace all their employees with AI and then immediately need the human’s back. They’re just doing it wrong are they?
I wouldn’t mind AI if it actually worked as advertised. If I could run a pure AI company from my home office that would be fabulous thing. The thing is it doesn’t work, you can’t do that.
Have you read the report about where they tried to get an AI to independently run a vending machine, it couldn’t even cope with that.
Yes, they are doing it wrong. AI is a tool for employees to use. It’s not an employee.
You don’t get AI to independently run a business, and anyone stupid enough to think you can or should do that should be nowhere near AI.
What’s probably gonna happen is a rapid buildout of infrastructure for cloud compute by reusing the datacenters for things like Windows 365 subscriptions.
There’s gotta be a second ulterior motive besides AI behind these datacenters, and the fact that Win365 exists could be one such motive.
All this hardware is essentially worthless other than AI
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.
It’ll be a golden age for repo men.
We could be men with ven
They will just turn all the empty space inside into detention centers and keep all of us locked up.
An era of cheap used hardware? I would guess probably like whatever happened after the dotcom bubble in the late 90s.
Did the dotcom bubble result in billions of dollars of physical infrastructure in this way? Genuinely asking.
Yes. But major differences:
The dot com buildout of physical communications infrastructure involved basically 3 things:
- Switches/routers at the nodes for sending signals down the right route.
- Fiber optic cables connecting the nodes.
- Legal rights of way and easements for the legal right to keep the physical assets in that physical place, and to maintain/replace the stuff as needed.
Category number 1? That stuff went obsolete quickly, and wasn’t really reused after the crash.
Category number 2 was better. Turns out, fiber optics can carry signals on a lot more channels than those fibers were originally designed for. And they’re designed for useful lives measured in decades. So even if they sat dark from being unused for 5-10 years, eventually they could be used again.
Category 3 is super important. That legal right is basically permanent, and so long as communications equipment needs to physically go from one place to another, having that legal right can be built on and profited on (including the ability to sell or lease those rights).
What’s that gonna look like for the AI infrastructure? The servers full of GPUs are the bulk of the cost, and the GPUs are replaced with a new generation every 1-2 years, seem to require all new power and cooling infrastructure every 1-2 generations or so.
Plus the AI buildout looks to be several trillion dollars. Even adjusting for inflation, that’s so much more than the tens of billions that each telecom company built out that infrastructure.
And it’s hard to see how the servers themselves will be useful for regular businesses, much less consumers. A Blackwell 72-GPU server is $3 million and takes 130 kW to run. A residential electrical line maxes out at about 48kW. The newest Vera Rubin servers are projected to be up to 600kW, with all the power and cooling management that comes with that, plus all the ultra high end networking stuff built into that rack. Even deep pocketed businesses will have trouble finding a use for that server rack worth millions, requiring a ton of supporting infrastructure that not even normal pre-2025 data centers have.
I don’t know specifically, but there were thousands of startups that used computers, so when they went belly up one would assume they liquidated their assets. /edit: checking, yes according to google it did result in billions in liquidated or abandoned computer hardware.
Yes, in ways that were actually greatly beneficial. Some companies were complete vaporware, but it proved a huge boom for fibre optic infrastructure and on the whole, building out modern telecom infrastructure. In a few short years, people went from dialup and T1 connections to DSL and high-speed cable. People weren’t connected, and now they suddenly needed to be. It was an entirely new enterprise.
Unfortunately, these AI datacenters aren’t really the same. They’re not benefitting the public in a lasting sense. These are hot, they’re loud, and they’re expensive. The biggest benefits you may see from them after the bubble bursts is the infrastructure that was required to sustain them.
Improvements to sustainable, and cleaner energy sources are probably the biggest benefits. Reclaiming and rebuilding old nuclear plants, increased solar and wind projects. Governments that are willing to sell their constituents down a river for the business of a tech conglomerate won’t benefit from this, but for the states that are now passing legislation to require these kinds companies to put their money into the communities they want to operate in may build lasting improvements.
It’s a small silver lining, but it’s there. That said, I can only imagine that when these companies see their business begin to get buried under the landslide of debt and reality that they will do everything in their power to escape liability for the waste of resources.
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