The AI boom
They misspelled “bubble.” None of the AI providers have a path towards profitability.
The AI boom is so huge it’s causing shortages everywhere else The $700 billion AI spending spree has few precedents. Good luck finding an electrician or a reasonably priced smartphone.
Submitted 9 hours ago by Allah@piefed.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
kescusay@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Strider@lemmy.world 27 minutes ago
Or hype.
greyscale@lemmy.sdf.org 8 hours ago
None of the AI providers have customers. They’re all selling to OpenAI.
Deconceptualist@leminal.space 7 hours ago
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.
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.
axh@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Profitability went out of fashion. Control and power is a new trend. Big tech controls 95% (if not more) of all information sources. Even if they don’t own newspapers, they can make them more or less visible at will. Google tried to monetize it with ads everywhere but that is the old way of thinking.
Cambridge analytica showed that by controlling the information, you can select who makes the laws.
Musk bought Twitter without any chance for a reasonable return on investment. Guess why?
The “old tech” (Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) controls what you know. But AI goes a step further. It controls what you think about things. It can explain why, what you thought was outrageous, is perfectly normal, or vice versa. It’s your own personalised propaganda machine. Once enough people are hooked and get used to using AI, the enshitification phase will begin and the AI will become more and more opinionated. And most people won’t notice… Some will, but they don’t need to influence everyone.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Classic capitalist trap. AI is a service that was never meant to be profitable. AI is bringing tech bros into socialism.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
While I agree with you, is there anyway to know how much an average prompt (let’s say a coding question that used to be a quick google search) costs?
I really want to ask people, would you pay X per prompt?
Cause most people “love” AI cause it costs very little
kurwa@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
People measure the water usage so why not.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
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.
mynona@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
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.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Huh, where’s that?
Last data center I was on outside Cheyenne, WY there were about 100 iron workers from Texas doing their thing.
cannedtuna@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Well yeah, it’s right there in the first sentence
Electricians are getting harder to find, and some construction projects are on hold.
They’re talking about commercial construction. Because of all these data centers being built electricians are being moved around because of the money being thrown at these projects. Dallas has been a hub for tech sector projects for a while; because of all the new data centers being built in Texas there are out of state electricians coming in for these projects from neighboring states like OK. Funny tho, now that Oklahoma is starting its own data center boom, now electricians from OK would just rather stay there which is causing projects in TX to stall.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
An Inside Wireman does not do the work of a Residential Wireman. They CAN, they just don’t.
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
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 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 will 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.
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
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?
Mwa@thelemmy.club 1 hour ago
just burst already please
Sunflier@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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 to sqander.
vodka@feddit.org 4 hours ago
Surely it’ll trickle down this time?
Sunflier@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Any second now. Maybe just one more tax cut just to be safe.
/s
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 4 hours ago
Meanwhile they can’t figure out why not enough
consumerswage slaveschildren are vormenSunflier@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Don’t worry. They’ll “solve” the problem with abortion bans.
rogsson@piefed.social 4 hours ago
Just crash and burn already… Idiot timeline
lath@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Anyone remember which country had an inflation so bad, it issued trillion dollar bills useful only as toilet paper?
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 8 hours ago
MangoCats@feddit.it 4 hours ago
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
One sec, let me ask an AI about that
nanlux_user@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
IIRC it was Zimbabwe?
jellyfishhunter@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Hyperinflation in Germany after WW1? But I think there must be more examples.
e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social 8 hours ago
i wouldn’t mind wiping my ass with cheeto-face
SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
There is a toilet paper that has his face on it, I bought some.
Prayers weren’t working, I’ll try anything.
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 7 hours ago
They hadn’t mastered the Argentinian custom of changing currency to remove zeros.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 6 hours ago
The closest you can get to that is if you vacation in Vietnam. One Euro is about 30,000 Vietnamese đồng. Yeah, it’s really called like that. Buy a Coca Cola with a 100,000 bill, pull a few million out of the ATM.
verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 4 hours ago
Shoukd Instart selling tulip seeds?
axh@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Don’t worry, it makes your life a little bit harder now, but it is worth it, because if everything goes well, your employer will save a lot of money by firing you. Yes you will lose your source of income, but ChatGPT will help you by providing tips on how to survive as a homeless person!
Totally worth it.
Allah@piefed.world 5 hours ago
some say it’s a bubble other go full doomer idk what to believe
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
But critics worry that the up-front costs to develop AI have become so mammoth that the investment can possibly pay off only if AI reshapes life, work and the economy in a way that uncorks massive new profits for these technology firms.
So this is why I don’t think it would pay off:
Haven’t they already shoved AI in every aspect of our lives? I’ve literally seen tooth brushes with AI.
Putting aside how much normal people hate AI, if you already have integrated it everywhere, how can you grow further?
Seriously, we’ve already hit critical mass and now some people actively avoid it, even if you force them, how would the AI revolution look any different than what we have today?
vrek@programming.dev 5 hours ago
I’ve said it in other similar articles, it depends on your definition of “Ai”. Marketing is insisting on “powered by Ai” on all sorts of products but that doesn’t mean llm. Some “Ai” may be useful, like the old on-star system on some cars. They had multiple inputs to determine if a crash occurred and alert emergency services if it did… Could be classified as Ai.
Your toothbrush example could be useful, if just finished cleaning cycle and battery level below 20% and not on charger, emit a beep to alert user to charge tooth brush. More advanced, and I doubt these are the case but would be cool and useful. If the could detect blood during a cleaning cycle, alert user to contact a dentist for possible gum disease. Or detection of a new/growing hole in a tooth based on the defection of the bristles and alert user to see a dentist for possible cavity.
Without a solid definition of “Ai” this is all marketing talk. Basically all “Ai” takes multiple inputs and then generates an output based on those inputs. If you say it must generate it based on a llm, then what about the image generating ai? If you say it must have natural language as in an input most of these “Ai” products don’t qualify unless they expect you to say “ok, sonic care end cleaning cycle” with a mouth full of toothpaste and water. Technically an argument could be made that a check engine light on a car is “powered by Ai”.
The only definition which goes against this and I would agree to is a system where given an identical set of inputs the output is not always(or ever) the same. If that’s the case then I am going to start making “Ai” powered lava lamps…
reksas@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
i think the plan is to first shove it everywhere, have everyone use and rely on it and eventually become dependent. Then they start tightening the screws while using it to influence people too.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
That requires it to provide something other solutions can’t.
People need taxis, uber drove them out and then increased the price, so people used it and ended up paying a similar amount to old taxis (maybe a little more).
People don’t need AI, if chatGPT stops working, you can just use a search engine again. Sure you might not be used to it and feel dependant on the chatbot, but if it’s free compared to a big price tag, the path of least resistance would be to use the cheap solution.
The only way is that if your brain dead enough and rich enough to pay high prices, but these robber barons are ensuring people don’t have much cash.
richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 7 hours ago
Yet another technological antisolution.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Because the product is dreams and the customers are investors.
chunes@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I have an idea about how to solve it. How about google only gives ai answers to people who specifically ask for one
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I quit using Google a long time ago. It’s answers weren’t good enough before AI.
sommerset@thelemmy.club 7 hours ago
Wait why would I not find electrician?
knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
Because they took a job at a different company to work for billionaires instead of you
Tinks@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
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.