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?

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
      151·
      2 days ago

      I didn’t say fad, I said bubble.

      Do you genuinely think that all of these trillion dollar companies will suddenly become profitable, let alone enough to sustain the rapid level of infrastructure development?

        • ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish
          61·
          2 days ago

          Then can I interest you in a new AI investment opportunity? It’s a new model we’re calling Fraude

        • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
          31·
          2 days ago

          There was a dot-com bubble too. The internet was here to stay, but it was still a bubble. It’s not an either-or situation.

          • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOP
            2·
            1 day ago

            Yes, exactly. There were people who called the internet a fad at the time. Fads go away completely and don’t come back. Plenty of historical examples.

            A bubble is the result of hype, enthusiasm, and/or overconfidence in a sector. Usually after a bubble bursts, there are lots of losers and a few winners, then after a decade or so the market stabilizes.

            LLMs are very useful in a limited number of applications, and so will go on being a part of society and probably end up as a pretty important market. However, OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, Nvidia, etc. are all valued close to or above $1 trillion (not to mention the old players like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft).

            There is NO way that all of those companies will launch and maintain products that are more profitable than the GDP of most countries. Especially considering that they will be facing international competition from Baidu, Alibaba, DeepSeek, Yandex, etc.