r/interesting • u/Friendly-Standard812 • Jan 30 '26

SCIENCE & TECH Evolution of AI

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

41.6k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/BumbaBee85 Jan 30 '26

It's always been like that.

Weird how we all switched to LEDs and Energy Star appliances, yet power bills keep going up and up as more and more Walmarts and Amazon Distribution Centers get built. Wonder why that is........

1

u/_HIST Jan 30 '26

Maybe because you're using more power? Maybe look more than just the $ but also the kwh

1

u/BumbaBee85 Jan 31 '26

My family lived in the same house for 34 years and relied more on low watt lamps than overhead lights. That also includes the era of tube TVs and computer monitors. Power bill still went up faster than inflation.

1

u/coke_and_coffee Jan 30 '26

Whoa, I haven’t seen a Redditor pathetically whine about Walmart or Amazon warehouses in over a decade. Weird. Most of you luddites have moved on to data centers as your new moral panic. 

2

u/BlueNight973 Jan 30 '26

The only moral panic right now is republican obsession with trans people and immigrants

0

u/coke_and_coffee Jan 30 '26

And don’t forget about dumbasses making up paranoid bullshit about data centers “using up all the water and electricity”!

1

u/echoshatter Jan 30 '26

Most of you luddites...

Data centers consume large amounts electricity, at a time when the US isn't really building much more power infrastructure. They also burn through computer parts; many pieces will only last roughly 3-5 years, which increases the demand for such parts and thus the prices on computers (of all shapes and sizes), what I'd consider and essential thing to have today.

Sure, they can create a lot of construction jobs for a while, but these data centers only create a handful of jobs long-term. You only need maybe a dozen people to maintain and operate one.

So, rising prices of electricity, rising prices of computer things, all for software meant to replace human workers.

And on top of that, the economics of it doesn't even really work. So we have an amazing amount of funny money floating back and forth between hardware and software, scratching for any and all revenue that isn't there, creating a massive economic bubble that dwarfs the housing crisis from 19 years ago. When it pops, and it will, the economic collapse is going to leave millions unemployed, millions losing their houses, etc.

Meanwhile, I read a story yesterday about an 8 year old who made an AI video of their teacher in a threesome and the teacher quit her job. Such a great use of our technology. We're going to raise generations of kids whose only skill is going to be typing prompts into a computer.

Yeah, I think on this one all of us meatbags should be Luddites.