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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/65410582
Canals were at least solving a problem that actually existed and needed solving at the time when they were started. AI data centres are being built in anticipation of future demand, for use cases that haven't been developed yet.
That’s not accurate from my understanding. I quit my SDE job in December, but my former coworkers say they use AI pretty much all day and find it useful. Ofc, the company’s systems were an indecipherable mess, mostly because of rushed choices those same people made everyday, but neither here nor there. This is why tech companies are cutting jobs.
Whether any of this is sustainable remains to be seen, but there are current use cases and real demand for “AI” data centers.
I believe that they use it all day. I believe that they say they find it useful.
I also believe that their bosses gave them a productivity slot machine and told them if they don’t play it they’re fired.
So some of them like it for bad reasons, and some of them have to pretend to like it.
I’m a self employed old-timer engineer. I love the magic pattern machine box. Wish I had this back in the y2k bug fixing days.
I pay for it myself, as a business owner.
I pay for it because it solves real problems I have, and improves my quality of life.
Current tech layoffs are mostly a result of over hiring during the pandemic. Blaming AI is just the sales pitch to investors try to prove that the AI spending was worth it.
I find this hard to believe, since I remember those pandemic layoffs already happening around 2023.
Wasn't this more related to the Trump era H1B limitations expiring under Biden around 2022? I may be misremembering the timeline since time after 2020 is fucked, but I swear I remember a greater uptick of H1B hires in tech around this time, as well as outsourcing teams to India.
A few years ago with ARM arriving at the data centers I envisioned there would be a day that density would go up and new data centers would be less in demand. I'm either too early or wrong.
In economics, the Jevons paradox, or Jevons effect, is said to occur when technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource.
Unfortunately using less of a good thing isn't how we do things.
I'm thinking you might have been wrong. Even without AI, I don't foresee demand for compute going down. Even if everything went over to ARM, I think that would have just slowed the rate of new builds.
At least canals are still useful to have around for recreational watersports.
The Internet has ruined me because I can't read the word "watersports" without thinking of the fetish anymore.
Ruined?
Gooned*
from the Olde English "guined" —an easy mix-up
Well I am sure some canals are next to dogging sites
Right, that's what the canals are useful for, what did you think they meant?
Not really. Most of these old canals were only a couple yards/meters wide and dried up 100 years ago.
If they're only a couple meters wide, how the heck are they supposed to fit watercraft?
The barges were just a little less than a few meters wide. The manpower to build a 100km long canal that is 2.5-3 meters wide is substantially less than what it takes to dig one 8 meters wide in the era before steam shovels.
But are they only 3 feet deep? /s
not enough attention is being paid to the drunken stumble into the canal that drowned someone! /s
Ahh that sucks, we have quite a few of ours still
Just think, after the systems-manufactured destitute addicts clean out the rare metals from those industrial pustules, the whole country's houseless will have homes, right?
Right?
The choice to compare data centers to canals rather than to railroads seems rather arbitrary.
It's not arbitrary at all. In fact it's the entire point.