I don't get it, why do we need so fucking many? Reading the thread about temps downwind from data centers and it's describing all the multiple HUGE data centers just around phoenix and it's just, like, why are they building so fucking many???

It's one thing to be like "yeah we're building a facility that uses more power than human civilization to power the Lying Machine" but it's like they're building fucking thousands of them. What the fuck is that?

Let's be incredibly generous and assume The Nerds invent intelligence, even then what is the fucking point of all this shit

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[–] LaughingLion@hexbear.net 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There's some assumptions the techbros are making:

AI will continue to become more effective at a steady rate
AI will become so prolific to the economy that you must have it and lost of it
We have the energy to support it and/or we will build that
AI's need for computation will continue to grow

In reality

AI's growth in complexity and effectiveness is starting to stall and we are seeing huge diminishing returns the bigger and more complex the models are under the current design paradigm
While AI is a great tool for a few things it is starting to prove it isn't actually a replacement for labor (that's another discussion)
We don't have the energy to support it and we won't be getting it within a decade here in America
AI's need for resources is actually shrinking and every month we get new methods and models that reduce the amount of resources we need in both storage and compute to achieve the same or similar results

The false assumptions are driven by companies like NVIDIA to drive up their sales and stocks. It's a bubble and it will burst.

For the record I think AI is here to stay as a tool. I also think it's way overhyped and going to crash. I think the future is in more efficient, smaller models that companies will be running on their own servers. Even now, the ability for the average gamer with a mid-range rig to run an AI girlfriend or boyfriend right on their home PC without ever dialing out to a datacenter is already pretty impressive. The models you can run locally to help you with coding tasks are even better. At least, good enough for small-bean developers.