this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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This is disconcerting. China’s not going to slow down on their build out of infrastructure.
And for those who spin this as a positive. AI is not all LLMs. Real diseases are being cured by the complex modeling, real world tangible products, like airplanes and ships, are being designed safer.
I speculate that there’s a good chance that the modeling will eventually help to resolve the climate issue too, rather than continue to contribute to it. Physics models become more robust for simulating nuclear fusion; logistics models for transportation and energy distribution too.
Living in a tourist town, I don’t want a large data center in my backyard either, but there are plenty of places that do and where it makes sense to do so both from a logistical and resource perspective.
We get behind the curve here and it’s going to be near impossible to catch up, and when the smart people can’t play ball with the newest toys, that leads to brain drain.
These data centers are NOT being used for research. Universities and research companies generally have their own computer clusters for that.
These are being designed and built for LLMs and LLMs only.
Plus, the US has already lost. We've cut off our allies, destroyed our trade partnerships, made the economy unsustainable, and also caused the very brain drain you mention here. We're cooked for decades at the least.
Oh fuck off with your whitewashing. Majority of these AI installations are LLMs. Look at what Oracle, Grok, OpenAI, Microsoft and more have been trying to build off. It’s all an infrastructure race that is hurting us all (physically too if you look at how they’re being powered).
The sooner it collapses, the better.
I don't think these data centers really are for LLMs. Right now, I can go to a dozen websites and use some LLM, without sitting on a wait list, for exactly $0.00 out of my pocket. So there's obviously enough processing power to meet demand as-is, but... What? Demand will skyrocket when they crank up the fees? OpenAI operated around ~$18 billion in deficit last year, is everyone really gonna pay $200 - $600 per month for this? Plus, LLMs are reaching a plateau, more data doesn't equal a more coherent model, they're running into a dead end.
My local data center is steamrolling over public opinion. We're not allowed to ask who will own it, how much power it will consume, nothing. "Officially," the installation has stalled, but they're still bulldozing the trees to make the lot where its supposed to go.
My personal conspiracy theory is that this is coming from Palantir, laundering resources through the tech companies, using DoD money. The data centers aren't for LLMs, but to build out a massive dragnet to track civilian travel, who goes where and when, to be used by DHS. That explains why they need to be distributed geographically per capita, the extreme secrecy around them, and the way utility companies and local politicians keep bending over despite public outcry.
Nobody wants a data center in their backyard.