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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9776134" data-attributes="member: 177">Yes.  That's the point.  Constantly refreshing the hardware is driving capital investment through the roof, and therefore the required return is also through the roof.  Refreshing again doesn't save you from that loop - competition will still drive tech companies to out-perform each other, so there will be more and more refreshes, until we run out of rare earth metals....I will note for all concerned - in the history of technology, increased efficiency does not generally drive reduction in expenditure.  It drives increased use.  When corporations found that fluorescent lights were cheaper than incandescent lights, they didn't reduce their electricity use - they increased how much space was lit, and how long they left the lights on!  When we increase the efficiency of algorithms or decrease the cost per flop of hardware... they'll just do EVEN MORE COMPUTUING. While the idea that efficiency upgrades will somehow save the situation, the history suggests otherwise.  If nothing else - the current cost is over an order of magnitude higher than the current revenue.  You aren't getting a 10x decrease in cost in short order, even considering Moore's Law.  And nobody understands who is going to spend a trillion dollars on AI output.  The actual risk is the economic upheaval should the AI business collapse for any reason.  Collapsing because they can't get enough machoflops to be an actual product is one possible reason for collapse.  Not being able to get enough people to pay for the result is another possible reason.  Either one leaves us with massive debt incurred that cannot be repaid, and the economic impacts therefrom.Data centers lying around unused is kind of the least of our problems at that point.</blockquote>

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