alt Hacker NewsNot only they are concentrating power in the hands of an oligopoly, but they're making the whole country unsafe. If everyone uses the same datacenters, it is enough to shut down a few of these data centers to bring civilization to a halt in this country. With the current AI trends, this risk is getting ever greater.
Yes it seems very dangerous. Also, I think a lot of the software we use today, we don't need or we could make much more efficient. We almost certainly don't need so many data centres. Most businesses could self-host their own systems. Even a lot of large companies.
I feel like we probably only need a tiny fraction of the compute capacity if we let things be decentralized and let the market operate naturally.
This was my thought years ago and so now it looks blatantly obvious to me with AI data centres driving electricity prices. It's pretty clear the industry is being propped up by other parts of the economy.