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?
Hopefully the used storage would flood the market and drive down prices.
If companies can’t afford the data centers they’ll probably be sold off. An AI crash doesn’t mean LLMs and AI goes away. While the pricing model may not be working for many, the underlying tech is for many customers big and small. Models will have to get more efficient, but in line with Jevons Paradox, use will continue to grow. Maybe a pause in growth, but I don’t see a graveyard of data centers unless some major shift in regulation.
It’ll be a golden age for repo men.
We could be men with ven
An era of cheap used hardware? I would guess probably like whatever happened after the dotcom bubble in the late 90s.
Did the dotcom bubble result in billions of dollars of physical infrastructure in this way? Genuinely asking.
Yes, in ways that were actually greatly beneficial. Some companies were complete vaporware, but it proved a huge boom for fibre optic infrastructure and on the whole, building out modern telecom infrastructure. In a few short years, people went from dialup and T1 connections to DSL and high-speed cable. People weren’t connected, and now they suddenly needed to be. It was an entirely new enterprise.
Unfortunately, these AI datacenters aren’t really the same. They’re not benefitting the public in a lasting sense. These are hot, they’re loud, and they’re expensive. The biggest benefits you may see from them after the bubble bursts is the infrastructure that was required to sustain them.
Improvements to sustainable, and cleaner energy sources are probably the biggest benefits. Reclaiming and rebuilding old nuclear plants, increased solar and wind projects. Governments that are willing to sell their constituents down a river for the business of a tech conglomerate won’t benefit from this, but for the states that are now passing legislation to require these kinds companies to put their money into the communities they want to operate in may build lasting improvements.
It’s a small silver lining, but it’s there. That said, I can only imagine that when these companies see their business begin to get buried under the landslide of debt and reality that they will do everything in their power to escape liability for the waste of resources.
I don’t know specifically, but there were thousands of startups that used computers, so when they went belly up one would assume they liquidated their assets. /edit: checking, yes according to google it did result in billions in liquidated or abandoned computer hardware.
Cloud infra gonna get real cheap
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.
A golden age for laser tag arenas
I would prefer a roller rink revival myself, but laser tag is fun too.
Ok hear me out: Roller laser tag!
grils! grils! there’s plenty of floorspace for both!
Indoor airsoft/paintball too, provided it’s purged of MAGA cosplayers
Make them detention camps for MAGA traitors and pedophiles.
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.
I dont believe its a theory. Its absolute fact. Why else would they be requiring cameras in all cars next year, and putting flock cameras all over every city? That surveillance data needs to be stored and sorted through. This is the real reason for the massive push of data centers and bribery of politicians.
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.
What the LLMs can do reasonably well though is determine the political leanings of people’s typed messages, so it can sort people into lists of potential dissidents based on their risk to the state, then they can have the human agents do the framing for arrest. The AI is probably terrible at doing that consistently too, but they don’t have the personnel to do it by hand and the false positives still work to instill the fear of it.
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.
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
My stupid Ai side project would be fast as fuck though.
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.
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.
Meta knows. But they have to play the game.
