Gorglax9
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Jun 2, 2026 8:18 PM
Gorglax9
4951
224
22
Goatfer
I think there was a Whitest Kids You Know skit about this.
MyVerySmarterUserName
“AI” is fast tracking research in modern medicine and more. Imgur’s troglodyte “FUCK AI” stance needs some fucking nuance. Fuck data centers without offsets. Fuck AI companies and their capitalist agenda.. etc etc.. yes, you can do better. Be better. Blanket statements are typically for dumbasses who don’t read. “Fuck nuclear technology” isn’t the same as “Fuck nuclear arms proliferation”.
lenomdeplume
Excellent post. Hopefully space colonies will fall next.
Fentex
I've no idea if that's true, but it sorta happened in my city which was designed half a world away as a grid but in reality was built around paths people actually used, there is how ever one wide avenue off to the side which is a bit odd because it was reserved for a canal into the city from a river estuary. Until the cities port (in an extinct volcano caldera over the 1000~2000 foot high hills formed by it's crater) became accessible by digging a rail tunnel to it. End of canal.
Cyandvai
Here in Phoenix, they found the canals left behind.
AmyBethMegJo
Happened in my city.
AmyBethMegJo
IDontKnowWhatToDoAnymoreAndImTired
For the record, I hope everyone understands that this is 100% bullshit.
There was no massive nationwide canal-building boom and bust. There was no plan for a national grid. Every midwestern town does not have a half-finished canal. In the 1830s there were eight canals that were under construction. They were all completed.
https://indcanal.org/newsletters/the-tumble-november-2020/
Veh1
There was the Clinton–Kalamazoo Canal in Michigan that failed so badly their constitution now bans state-funded infrastructure projects.
AllwaysCarryABible
It did sort of happen in Sweden though. Göta kanal bisected Sweden by the time it was done it was obsolete.
Ghnhx
Just commenting so my u/n and the threads u/n are together, as they should be. IYKYK
Gorglax9
painterofdark
Great and on-point analogy.
IDontKnowWhatToDoAnymoreAndImTired
Except it's predicated on a complete lie.
SpectrumRabbit
So…what will replace data centers?
iscreamfantastic
Poverty.
airbreather
Small farms where the survivors struggle to produce enough to feed themselves while they huddle around a fire listening to tales from their elders about the mysterious holy book, "Wikipedia," now lost to history.
HillOfBeans
Canals.
SpectrumRabbit
Einbrecher
Local models. Today, open source models like QWEN, which you can run on a graphics card, are maybe 12-18 months behind frontier models like Claude/GPT. All these data centers are being built on the assumption that CapEx gates access to LLMs. In reality, by the time the data centers being started today come online, the gap between local models and frontier models will be indistinguishable to most people, and nobody's going to want to pay API costs for what it'll take to recoup those investments.
CaptainScarfish
It's not necessarily the datacenters that get replaced, but the AI that gets discontinued, making them unprofitable.
SpectrumRabbit
Do you think AI as a technology is going to go away? I don’t see that, but curious of your viewpoint.
CaptainScarfish
Not go away entirely, but nowhere near at the scale it is today. They've still yet to be profitable last I checked.
SpectrumRabbit
Yeah I could see that. The “all AI” thing will definitely burst, imho. But it will always be very useful. Kinda like how metaverse was a flop. Normal people aren’t trying to replace people. I’m building an app with AI (with experience in back end development), but it’s to start, not planning on never hiring anyone lol.
FellaWithUmbrella
Then came highways and railroad boom was over (with a ”little” help from oil and car industry).
itsthevoiceman
Tires, too.
marsilies
Railroads are still plentiful in the US, it's just that it's nearly all freight because that's way more profitable than passenger rail, so the railroad companies got the US to nationalize passenger rail, but it doesn't own the actual railways except for a part in the NorthEast corridor, where passenger rail is doing quite well. Everywhere else, passenger rail gets repeatedly blocked by freight trains illegally taking priority, because freight owns the railways, and the DOJ won't prosecute.
marsilies
Watch this about US rail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7e38Q7e1U
Yetiphobia
Same in Canada, where passenger rail used to work well enough and where we should have much more. The freight companies (now US owned of course) own the rails, which means they own the right of way.
NappaTheFriendlyGhost
in 2007 it was so ridiculously easy to get a loan that my (then) 16 year old school friend got a business loan for almost 100k. Her collateral was a 2005 ford mustang. In 2000 web based businesses were getting tons of investor money poured into them. There are other examples but the sad thing is bubble bursting is so horrifically obvious when its about to pop.
hockey4mal8
I expect the stock market to crash if the Dems take the majority in November. (Yes I absolutely want them to win).
The oligarchs will see that their free ride will be shutting down for a while and move their money out of the markets. I believe large corpos and wall st tank on purpose to hurt Dems because they hate any regulation or taxes.
HandoB4Javert
Neednoggle
Can this one just go ahead and pop already? It's the waiting through this seemingly endless tech bro bullshit that sucks the most. Let's just get on with it
itsthevoiceman
It'll start when SpaceX goes public. Consider that the canary in the coal mine.
SisyphusRollin
Why do you want to rush towards people suffering and shit?
Neednoggle
I want to get the suffering done and over with as quickly as possible. At this point it's pretty inevitable (though if it can be avoided, I'm all for that). AI is already causing mass suffering; what's the point in dragging it out? Just to see how horrendous things can really get? No, let's put it in the rear view mirror, I say.
SisyphusRollin
Jesus christ you really don't have a fucking clue. "Lets put it in the rear view mirror" jesus fucking christ. Its so fucking arrogant and mean. Like looking at someone during the housing crisis and telling them to buck up and get over it. AI right now is not causing MASS suffering for fucks sake, crashing the economy would though.
SisyphusRollin
People losing jobs, losing healthcare, losing homes and all that fun shit. You want to RUSH towards that because you're upset about the water usage or something? Like, you're a fucking monster (truth is, you're just ignorant on what you're talking about. You want billionaires to hurt, this wont hurt them. This will hurt the working class, you're begging for the vulnerable to become more vulnerable. Its evil. Saying "its inevitable" is evil as fuck as well.
SisyphusRollin
"I just want to see more people suffer sooner because its not as painful as the narrative said it should be" its like a self fulfilling prophecy, you guys want people to suffer so your arrogance can be justified. AI is just a new tech, its not destroying shit. Having an economic crash would lead to families going fucking hungry, kids not eating. You being pissy because someone posted an AI Image isn't on the same level as children going to bed hungry.
SisyphusRollin
When some CEO fires people for "AI to replace them" they're just firing people and using it as an excuse, when someone starts pollutng the water... AI Didn't do that, corrupt people did that. The data center could be hosting charitable servers for free youtube or some shit, whats inside is unimportant. The corruption with local officials isn't. AI is just machine learning, jesus fucking christ. Luddites wanting people to suffer so they don't have to learn is fucking insane.
Neednoggle
Fuckin amazing how you managed to read so much that I didn't say.
DrBlackJack
The problem is, historically, the longer a bubble is artificially supported, the worse the burst becomes. Right now we're forcing rhe bubble to inflate by investing more and more infrastructure into this AI scam. Which means all these companies that have become AI dependent are gonna feel the burst that much more. The sooner the burst happens, the fewer companies will implode. Though at this point it going to make 2008 look like a minor blip...
SisyphusRollin
Just like that Internet scam and that home PC scam. Its not a scam, its a functioning bit of technology thats capable of a lot of things. This idea that its all a scam is propaganda from lunatics who refuse basic reality, Claude is being used everywhere and working. Variations of these models are being used all over for so many things, the advanced mechanical learning we have is saving lives, curing cancers etc.
IDontKnowWhatToDoAnymoreAndImTired
Hush now. We can't let actual information interfere with the hysteria.
DrBlackJack
That's not the scam. LLMs have been around a while, and have their uses. The scam is the AI "industry" which has become an all consuming monster, feeding on itself. The booming valuation of the AI industry is heavily driven by its own infrastructure. Chipmakers and investors supply billions of dollars to AI startups, which then spend huge chunks of that same capital buying compute power and processing chips from those very same infrastructure providers.
SwiftyGuy
Not sure why you’re being downvoted because you’re right. AI should not be used to take people’s jobs en mass as feared, but it absolutely has its uses, especially by small companies and individuals, certainly via open source models that aren’t owned by the billionaire class. Large corporations and billionaire owners, though? Fuck ‘em!
SisyphusRollin
I would argue, we shouldn't hope for a burst. We shouldn't hope that things get worse for more people, we should hope for there to NOT be a burst. For the bubble to not burst, for the economy to not crash for people to not suffer. Yes, fuck the AI billionaire tech bros lying to everyone. Fuck the corruption in local areas letting them pollute or make backroom deals with energy companies. We shouldn't HOPE people lose their homes and jobs because we fear something we don't understand.
LoudBirb
I'm sure many people said similar things about the dot-com bubble. The AI bubble has been mirroring it so perfectly that it honestly wouldn't surprise me at all if someone could find this exact word-for-word comment made in some ancient geocities proto-blog in 1997.
With the exception of "tech bros", I guess. Pretty sure that's post-2010 slang.
DrBlackJack
Hoping for the bubble not to burst is like closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ear hoping the sinking ship you're on will magically stop sinking. The longer you wait to accept you're fucked, the worse it'll be when you are forced to act. You'll have fewer options and there will be more death. Accept the bubble is going to burst now, and maybe we can salvage some of the economy before everyone is under water.