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The AI Investment Boom

(www.apricitas.io)
271 points m-hodges | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.299s | source
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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[] No.41896346[source]
Reading this makes me willing to bet that this capital intensive investment boom will be similar to other enormous capital investment booms in US history, such as the laying of the railroads in the 1800s, the proliferation of car companies in the early 1900s, and the telecom fiber boom in the late 1900s. In all of these cases there was an enormous infrastructure (over) build out, followed by a crash where nearly all the companies in the industry ended up in bankruptcy, but then that original infrastructure build out had huge benefits for the economy and society as that infrastructure was "soaked up" in the subsequent years. E.g. think of all the telecom investment and subsequent bankruptcies in the late 90s/early 00s, but then all that dark fiber that was laid was eventually lit up and allowed for the explosion of high quality multimedia growth (e.g. Netflix and the like).

I think that will happen here. I think your average investor who's currently paying for all these advanced chips, data centers and energy supplies will walk away sorely disappointed, but this investment will yield huge dividends down the road. Heck, I think the energy investment alone will end up accelerating the switch away from fossil fuels, despite AI often being portrayed as a giant climate warming energy hog (which I'm not really disputing, but now that renewables are the cheapest form of energy, I believe this huge, well-funded demand will accelerate the growth of non-carbon energy sources).

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ben_w ◴[] No.41898086[source]
> but now that renewables are the cheapest form of energy, I believe this huge, well-funded demand will accelerate the growth of non-carbon energy sources

I think the renewables would have been built at the same rate anyway precisely because they're so cheap; but nuclear power, being expensive, would not be built if this bubble had not happened, and somehow nuclear does seem to be getting some of this money.

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1. rsynnott ◴[] No.41903672[source]
> but nuclear power, being expensive, would not be built if this bubble had not happened, and somehow nuclear does seem to be getting some of this money

Eh, it's generally SMRs, which remain kinda vapourware-y. I'd be a little surprised if anything concrete comes of it, tbh; I suspect that it is mostly PR cover for reactivating coal plants and the like. (The one possibly-real thing might be the Three Mile Island restart, but that in itself isn't particularly consequential.)