In the last week, we’ve had no less than three different pieces asking whether the massive proliferation of data centers is a massive bubble, and though they, at times, seem to take the default position of AI’s inevitable value, they’ve begun to sour on the idea that

As always with Zitron, grab a beverage before settling in.

  • Feyd@programming.dev
    8·
    6 days ago

    I’ve seen this argument way to often and it is completely pointless. The argument that this will succeed because something in the past succeeded is exactly the same as arguing it will fail because something in the past failed.

    If you want to draw the conclusion that they’re similar enough to use history in prediction, you’ll have to show that they’re similar and make a case for why those similarities are relevant.

    I haven’t seen anyone making this argument bother with this exercise, but I have seen people that actually look at the economics discuss why they’re different animals.

    There is also the tech itself.

    1. internet - connect everything together across vast distances. Obvious limitless possibilities.

    2. smart phones (you didn’t mention here but this is the other one people use for this argument most frequently) - Anything a computer can do in the palm of your hand.

    3. llms - can do some powerful stuff like rifle through and summarize text, or generate text, or generate code… Except you can’t really trust it to do any of these things accurately, and that is a fundamental aspect of how the technology works rather than something that can be fixed, so it can’t be used responsibly for anything critical.