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?
It’ll be a golden age for repo men.
We could be men with ven
What’s probably gonna happen is a rapid buildout of infrastructure for cloud compute by reusing the datacenters for things like Windows 365 subscriptions.
There’s gotta be a second ulterior motive besides AI behind these datacenters, and the fact that Win365 exists could be one such motive.
Make them detention camps for MAGA traitors and pedophiles.
A golden age for laser tag arenas
I would prefer a roller rink revival myself, but laser tag is fun too.
grils! grils! there’s plenty of floorspace for both!
Indoor airsoft/paintball too, provided it’s purged of MAGA cosplayers
Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.
If anyone thinks I’m wrong, they’re completely blind to what’s going on and their future plan.
Survielllance centers for all the data being stolen off your smartphone and flock cameras.
Yes, and other sources. That’s my theory as to why most of them are being built in the first place, regardless of AI.
If anyone thinks I’m wrong, they’re completely blind to what’s going on and their future plan.
But the hallucination problem means that everyone will end up with a meaningless list of AI hallucinated “prior offenses” that could be used to arrest, detain and disappear literally anyone, based on mismatched unaudited surveillance footage of completely different people.
I’m thankful that no powerful persons today want a world where they can do that to anyone they find inconvenient.
It would be genuinely alarming if we had any total assholes out there with wealth or power or both.
you dropped this, /s
someone might mistake you for a brain damaged psych patient without it.
Mmhm very alarming. Good thing we are safe.
Apparently the US government is looking to give a massive bailout under the guise of “public partnership” so the public will pay for them and then corporations will get to use them and not pay us more than likely. They’ll be put to use, we’ll pay for them to take our jobs. It’s really the best situation possible…
/Wrist
This is the most accurate assessment of the situation I have heard thus far.
2008 with hardware.
Hardware that dies in 5 years. At least the houses are still around assuming they didn’t get wiped out with those fires
In past crypto busts, Nvidia bought used datacenter GPUs and threw them away, to keep prices of new cards high.
They will undoubtedly do this again. Probably AMD/Intel too.
And “FOMO” style crypto mining sites were just abandoned or repurposed AFAIK.
But honestly, I don’t know what will happen now. Especially to the “quick and dirty” sites like Meta’s server tents, all the supposedly temporary evaporative cooling/gas generators and such.
Used server GPUs are still pretty good processors for all sorts of things. I would guess that Nvidia pivots towards robotics and“business virtual reality,” kinda like they’re already pivoting towards more utilitarian LLMs with the Nemotron releases, so maybe the surviving GPUs will get used for that.
One thing not mentioned here: Hardware has an expiration date. As hardware improves and becomes more performant, with reduced power consumption and heat generation, older hardware loses its value (I’ve got free servers and switches this way).
AI data centers have been built anticipating a demand that won’t happen, therefore they are in a market already over saturated, dominated by few and just selling allocation won’t let them cover costs if they are supposed to compete against the big 5.
I would say that in EU or few other countries where they care about data locality that could help, but chances are some providers won’t get paid, some people will lose their jobs, and taxpayers will give a bailout to the wrong people.
They are disposable. Meta is deploying them in tents. Elements of the infrastructure like power generation and heat management could be made durable, but I imagine that isn’t a huge cost compared to replacing the entire guts of the thing every generation.
Not sure about the buildings themselves, but I’m pretty confident at least their contents will flood the secondhand market with cheap secondhand gear. I won’t say the crypto bubble has burst, but a lot of the mining rigs are being parted out and sold fairly cheap, and one specific crypto mining board has become popular as a DIY gaming system. (Currently doing a BC-250 “DIY SteamMachine” build myself).
As for the buildings, maybe we’ll see some creative uses like indoor farms or something. Or, perhaps, it’ll just be a mundane “AI datacenter becomes a generic data center”.
I’d guess they’d be repurposed into business centers or office space like we’ve seen with old malls, but malls were usually in populated areas where datacenters aren’t.
It’s kinda hard to reuse datacenter hardware for home use. Many connectors are different, form factors too. Not to mention the noise, in servers noise is about the last priority.
Selfhosting enthusiasts will get great deals, but I doubt it will become mainstream.
If my gaming PC dose not sound like a jet taking off, I’m not satisfied.
the bigger problem is, that AI optimized GPUs have terrible gaming performance
Based on where brick and mortar retail is right now (and assuming e-commerce continues to thrive), there won’t be much conversion of the data centers into anything useful due to how many buildings are already sitting idle. Maybe some will become distribution centers. But most will probably sit dormant and slowly crumble into disrepair.
They have great electrical connections. Fill them with batteries (not spicy lithium ones) and you have loads of local energy storage.
Lots of the difficulties with green projects right now is the electrical hook up, so they have all done the hard work!
Good point!
Crypto equipment has always cycled out to the market cheaply, it’s just usually not super useful second hand.
The equipment that AI data centers use isn’t really usable as consumer hardware, though.
It’s like the ASIC rigs used for Bitcoin mining, not the GPU rigs.
I’m pretty confident at least their contents will flood the secondhand market with cheap secondhand gear.
What market? Certainly not the consumer hardware market…?
My Need -> eBay -> [server part search term] -> Multiple inexpensive listings with large quantities available -> Buy -> My Need Met
Replace “server part search term” with full rack servers, switches, SFP+ modules, RAM, power supplies, pulled HDDs/SSDs, and/or any other part I’ve bought used that was a corporate/data center pull.
I don’t…none of that answered my question?
“Homelab nerds” are a market unto ourselves. We get most if not all of our gear secondhand from eBay or similar, and those storefronts on ebay are run by electronics recycling companies that get their inventory from data centers or corporate offices when they shut down or do hardware refreshes.
Ohhh I see.
As for the buildings, maybe we’ll see some creative uses like indoor farms or something.
Nope, though I admire your optimism. They’ll get repurposed into concentration camps.
Do these datacenters even exist or are they just plans on paper?
My impression is we aren’t axtually building anywhere near what these investors are investing in.
Will there even be anything to repurpose or scrap on the other side?
I am not so sure.
The one about 30 minutes from me most certainly exists. The one 15 minutes away they are building at this moment is just as real. The noise is ruining everything. The air is smoggy. It’s not just an interweb myth or something. These things are a blight on the places they appear in DC area for reference.
Oracle is building one of there several plans and even that one is gonna be years behind schedule. The rest are hardly more than a slab of concrete right now. So forget parting out computer hardware, they barely even have more than a couple of new buildings to sell off and so much debt that cannot possibly be paid because it depends on openAI suddenly having astronomical increases in revenue to even finish the existing plans.
Other players might be further ahead but I suspect the biggest gain for the gaming hardware market will simply be the cancelation of supposed contracts to buy up things like RAM and the drying up of money to buy AI-specific GPUs, forcing NV to actually care a tiny bit about the gaming segment again.
Datacenters aren’t only used for AI. They could be used for cloud gaming, or in general for hardware-as-a-service models as a capitalist solution to high hardware prices for consumers.
Or just good old server hosting.
I’ve heard these can’t be repurposed as general servers, but I don’t know enough about it to say if that’s accurate.
Hardware can’t, but the DCs definitely can. Their power and cooling capabilities will be over engineered for what you need but you can combat that by turning off excess capacity. It already has the base of what you need for normal DCs: space, Cooling, power and internet with corresponding redundancies.
I mean, disposable vapes can be repurposed as servers, it’s just a matter of how much compromises you’re willing to make
Indoor golf. Karts. Lazer tag.
If/when the AI bubble bursts, I’m skeptical that they would get repurposed as any kind of non-AI data center, as I doubt the demand would come anywhere close to matching the supply. The hardware would probably be sold off for pennies on the dollar, and hopefully these parts weren’t designed to be unusable in consumer PCs. I’d like to see those data centers turn into homeless shelters or something of benefit to the community, but that’d require extensive reconfiguring of the interior for a non-profit cause. More likely they’ll end up as warehouses and distribution centers, or end up as long-term vacancies.
