SoftBank Group is prepping to build a new AI data center in Ohio that could reach 10 GW of power demand and cost $30 billion to $40 billion for the computing infrastructure and a further $33 billion for a natural gas power plant, reports Bloomberg.

When completed, the new site could be one of the largest AI data centers ever built. Furthermore, it will be powered by one of the world’s largest fleets of gas turbines, equivalent to the energy supply of nine nuclear reactors.

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf
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    3 days ago

    I don’t get it. $70-80 billion for an AI data center, plus continued investment for hardware upgrades - how are they planning on making money from this?

    I get that we’re in a bubble but I’ve never seen this level of collective delusion/desperation before in the tech space.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      They’re not.

      I want to be clear; they want to and expect to make money from this. But they have no plan for how to.

      Right now absolutely no one in the data centre industry can figure out the math for how to make a profit. But because everyone else is building data centres, they’re all just assuming that someone else has figured it out and they don’t want to miss the boat.

    • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Well, let’s fire 30 million white collar employees and charge $1k/year for an AI replacement. That’s $30 billion a year every year!

  • andallthat@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    My Frontpage on Lemmy is now currently telling me that we’re on the brink of a terrible energy crisis due to the Iran war. And then this.

  • We’re continuing to accelerate climate change for this?

    Our descendants a thousand years into the future are going to look back on this time period with absolute disgust, knowing we sleepwalked into destroying the environment potentially for the remainder of our species’ existence - and we did it for the dumbest possible reasons.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        3 days ago

        In some form… Sure. 7 billion humans can die and the species can still survive.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        Mankind has survived and caused several mass extinctions in our millions of years of existence. We are a stubborn species and have a broken build with our tool use and information transfer capabilities.

      • Call it… optimism? I don’t think we’re that easy to eradicate completely, though that future looks pretty bleak to me - for the small population that continues to exist in it…

  • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This Japanese corporation who appears to be harmless in comparison to other tech corporations with overtly hostile intentions…

  • frunch@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    While the rest of the country is rapidly crumbling, at least we know some gigantic Corp is doing everything they can to hasten our demise for their profit

  • graycube@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Piketon is radioactive and toxic to live near there due is longterm role preparing radioactive materials for profit. I wouldn’t feel comfortable even driving through that town. I’m not sure if that makes it a good place for a datacenter or not.

    • 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      That’s one of the reason they’re gobbling up all GPU and RAM. They don’t want local models being viable to most people.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Yep, I don’t even really like these things, but ollama is a docker container away and the models work just fine on my several year old AMD laptop GPU.

  • Ancalagon@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I believe williams is the LNG supplier and they will have this off the network of regular LNG. It will be on its own.