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?

  • Asafum@lemmy.world
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    7 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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    7 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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      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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        7 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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      7 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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        7 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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          6 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.

  • Alvaro
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    6 days ago

    Get ready for the 2040 internet trend “spending the night in an abandoned data center”

  • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.

  • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
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    7 days ago

    One thing not mentioned here: Hardware has an expiration date. As hardware improves and becomes more performant, with reduced power consumption and heat generation, older hardware loses its value (I’ve got free servers and switches this way).

    AI data centers have been built anticipating a demand that won’t happen, therefore they are in a market already over saturated, dominated by few and just selling allocation won’t let them cover costs if they are supposed to compete against the big 5.

    I would say that in EU or few other countries where they care about data locality that could help, but chances are some providers won’t get paid, some people will lose their jobs, and taxpayers will give a bailout to the wrong people.

        • gwl [he/him]
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          5 days ago

          It’s also just that local AI is not worth the time and energy unless you’re a prick with too much money and incoherent ideology

            • gwl [he/him]
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              5 days ago

              There’s a few people who are like:

              • AI bad, cause environmental, capitalism, and training data being based on spyware
              • but if I run local AI, those magically all stop being true, because I think it hard enough
              • Senal@programming.dev
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                5 days ago

                Ah, yeah, I’ve seen that.

                There are also people who want to run locally for other reasons as well.

                Privacy being a big one, but there are others.

                I’m not sure what the ratios are though.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    6 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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      6 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

  • WhatISawInTheWoods@lemmy.world
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    6 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.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Cheap datacenters for sale to the surviving AI companies. It’s not like all things AI will disappear just because the bubble pops.