As I was using LLMs at work (I never use LLMs for personal projects), a question occurred to me:
What in the fuck are these new data centers supposed to actually do?
The enterprise users are all in on having LLMs write 300% of the code. And yet, both OpenAI and Anthropic are still giving these “$200 gets you $10 000 in API costs” subscriptions to every victim of AI psychosis.
Why do we have RAM, hard disk, SSD, GPU and CPU shortages and no “token shortage”?
I mean, we all know the answer, these are the offerings for the robot god, but like how in the fuck are they still obtaining loans for this shit?
You must log in or register to comment.
For the rich to create a panopticon to keep us In check…and also to charge for knowledge they did not earn or work for
They are for training new models, not running existing ones
My personal conspiracy theory is the AI companies are being used as a front for a new Manhattan Project for the surveillance dragnet. All those flock camera feeds gotta go somewhere. Imagine being able to look up who, what, where, and when (and infer why) for any person or place in the US, linking online interaction to physical places in near-real time.
Here’s who it’s being built for.
ETA: What I see happening over the next decade, the AI bubble ‘pops,’ government quietly absorbs the (by then) mostly complete facilities and hardware as part of the bailout, then news outlets go silent about data centers and ICE activity while we fall deeper into a fascist hellpit.
Imagine Hitler’s reign, but this time there will be no Anne Frank’s.
I think you’re right. There is this constant need for governments and the elite in general to keep tabs on the population. They need to detect dissidents that arranges protests, generate push back, are whistleblowers and just people who are somehow a threat to their power structures. Our online activities through phones and computers are presumably already surveilled and is used to profile us. Your LG tv is listening to everything you say by the way and I’m sure they are not alone. That combined with camera footage of physical activity/presence just fortifies their hold on the population further.
Because the rich people that have invested into it want AI to be too big to fail. That way we’re forced to keep moving forward on AI, and the rich can achieve their dream of not paying workers.
They pre buy the memory stock years in advance with IOU money.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theory, but after the Russian bot farm thing I think this is a race to have the means to Astro turf the Internet for propaganda.
I think we are going to end up with infranetworks, regionally and nationally to avoid this. And I fear that the only way to confirm that someone is not a bot soon will be ID or some sort of biometrics. I think this is a controversial take, but I’d support a non-anonymous internet/social media alternative if it meant everyone I talk to is a human.
As for a more optimistic take…. I’m sure there’s a lot of complex science shit that instead of actually mindfully researching and experimenting with, can instead just be brute forced. Kinda like those videos where they train “AI” to play racing games or Mario levels, but letting it randomly attempt it thousands of times — and eventually it even beats humans playing it in time and efficiency. Maybe we can use AI to generate more efficient machines?….
I think we are at the point where AI would be okay enough to do simple shit like simplified farm and factory work, low stakes stuff where it fucking up can’t actually have that severe of consequences. That’d require sweeping economical and social reforms to tackle unemployment, and that’s too optimistic for me. This probably won’t get us to a post scarcity society, but it could make a lot of things very trivial and cheap… if introduced ethically. There might be a point where there’s a lot of people that won’t/can’t get a job, many that shouldn’t need to get a job, and what to do with them. Not everyone can be the guy that fixes and builds the AI. Maybe being unemployed will become not a big deal
If the Russian Bot Farm thing you’re talking about is Ukraine bombing a data center and seeing 90% fewer right wing posts, I regret to inform you that it wasn’t accurate.
The bots they were talking about were search crawler bots from Yandex. Actual Twitter/X bots saw no change in traffic.
Admitted speculation:
I did, however, notice of my own accord that I had 4 days with zero scam calls instead of my usual 10-15, which in retrospect looking back corresponds with when a bunch of Russian services went down. I suspect that the automated crawlers and VOIP systems and aggregators perform a background hum of utility for scam and troll services that makes them much less effective in their absence.
Paying contractors
Im like 99% sure those are the only people profiting here. Data center electricians make bank to do mostly brain dead copy-paste underground
I’ve got a conspiracy theory about this.
Short answer: I think the new data centers are meant to house the uploaded consciousness of the bourgeoisie. Whether they actually have that technology, I’m not sure. The ultra-wealthy have been well aware of climate change, and I think we’re headed for an inflection point in the next couple years, when the emergency becomes undeniable to everyone.
The usual way we think about solving climate change is by cutting the average person’s emissions, whether through rationing or green tech. But if you have zero empathy for other human beings, there’s another way: just reduce the number of human beings, drastically. If you’re a billionaire pursuing that, what do you need? Workers. You can’t do anything without them. You don’t know how to make anything; you just control labor. So where do you put more money and priority than anything else? Artificial minds and artificial bodies: LLMs and robotics.
And if you think the planet’s going to get really bad, you also want to put yourself in a computer. Hence my original theory.
I don’t have hard evidence, other than that they’re doing everything you’d expect if this were the plan: They’re making the world more chaotic, so people die in wars.
They’re rolling back health services that keep people from getting sick and dying (see: RFK). It’s a cull. They’ve shifted from the carrot to the stick. Governments are turning authoritarian fast, and to me that looks like a ruling class desperate to hold onto its power.
