well, at least it is computer hardware, which famously keeps its value over long periods of time

Ed Zitron called it at least a year ago. He recently released an estimate of how many there are:

As of September, likely about $234bn worth (of the $561.5bn of Nvidia GPUs purchased since 2023) are sitting in warehouses or unpowered data centers.

This is one of the most absurd aspects of the whole AI build out in the US. Like this tech is still rapidly evolving, and we don't even know that current hardware is optimal for running modern LLMs. In fact, it's almost certainly isn't given that we already see stuff like this being developed. So, the US ended up investing astronomical sums of money into producing vast amounts of first gen chips that will likely be obsolete in a couple of years. Meanwhile, the part that is actually needed is power generation since whatever future chips are made are still going to need power, and that aspect has been almost entirely ignored. Incidentally, the situation appears to be completely opposite in China. There's been a massive investment in the grid, but the data centre build out has been very modest.

China already has the dirt on all its citizens. That's why there's no rush for them. Usa wants to jam as many in as possible before the bubble pops or the public boycotts them. These I bet are mostly for surveiling citizens.

lmfao imagine thinking that western regimes don't already have dirt on all their citizens. People literally carry a spying device in their pockets everywhere they go.

My gpu is holding it's value near msrp or above and my ram has increased in value. So.... :|

'We bought 600 train engines and 8000 rail cars, because we will probably figure out how to build 800,000 miles of new rail lines, somewhere, at some point.'

'Also the train engines and rail cars we bought are guaranteed to be horrendously inefficent within 2 years.'

'Also also, the train engines are highly fuel intensive and no we are not planning to fund any new fuel production.'

'We are very smart.'

'Why yes, our future rail line traffic demand projections are based on the "thoughts and prayers" model, thanks for asking!'

I'm just hoping I live to see all these GPUs go for pennies on the dollar when the bubble pops.

Gonna do a lot of video processing and rendering

Many people may see this and assume its just them drinking their own koolaid essentially but there is a bit of a twisted logic to it. They're basically just buying so many of these to keep the foundries happy to make them. They do have this delusion that they'll need more of them, but its more that they want production to increase so they are creating demand. Which is actually WORSE for the economy, because once their bet fails not only are these GPUs worthless but the foundries have built out production capacity that is now worth way less.

I am convinced that it is an effort to control who has access to AI and compute in general more than it is for the AI.

They wanted to make sure that they didn’t have any competition and that you would have to rent from them.

yeah I'd like to pick up a couple of H200s on the cheap :)

The big difference is that rail lines and rail cars will have value for many decades after being built. Meanwhile, chips are a notoriously depreciating asset that's likely to become worthless in a year or two.

Yep, the analogy isnt perfect, and it is amazing to me that in reality, its even fucking worse.

It would have to be more like a disintegrating or time delayed self destructing rail engine...

I am 10000% in belief of this. Its not tinfoil hat. They want to own your compute. Then youre absolutely beholden to them, and they can control the narrative and sow dissent even better.

Log onto bezosnet with your faceid and blood sample please.

Ed needs to be in office or something making a difference. Hes on fucking point at every turn and ive never seen him be wrong.

The people most suited to public governance are never the ones that actually want to do it. And vice versa, unfortunately.

So basically just inflating prices to keep the AI bubble bubbling. Amazon sponsoring Nvidia which then sponsors Amazon in return.

Surely the mark of healthy business practices!

If Amazon and the rest were around during the Tulip Boom and Bust, we would still be trading tulips for houses because they can manipulate this shit indefinitely.

Just remember these fuckers want to live forever, and then everything makes sense.

They expect AI to be able to grant them inmortality, either biologically OE digitally.

Their ego is so grand that maybe existing as a AI replica of themselves is enough.

Exactly therein lies the issue with humans.

Give them a break, it's not like they're a big cloud services company

What's his face from OpenAI has said over and over again, almost as a point of pride, that they view it as an utility and the goal is to put it on a meter

Information as a service .

PUUUUKKKEEEE