‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

AI needs $6T in annual revenue to justify data centre boom

222 points · 335 comments · Betelbuddy

  1. bunderbunder · · focus · HN ↗
    They talk a bit about where the AI companies are supposed to get their revenue from. I’d like to see these analyses go a step further and talk about how those AI customers are supposed to come up with that money as well.

    For example, the article suggests $1T from enterprise productivity tooling. A quick Google suggests the global enterprise productivity tooling market is only worth about $0.1T right now.

    Do we really expect all the world’s corporations to suddenly up their annual spend by 1,000% on average? Why?

    1. ItsMattyG · · focus · HN ↗
      it seems fairly obvious to me that once ai becomes as good as a worker, people will pay a workers wages to use it - 24/7, can't quit, can't complain that badly, no lunch breaks

      productivity tooling replaces employees

      1. geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
        > people will pay a workers wages

        Who re these people?

        1. ItsMattyG · · focus · HN ↗
          ... the people who are currently paying workers
          1. geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
            Fair… how many (ballpark) of these people do think are there? Where do they get the money to pay the workers currently?
            1. ItsMattyG · · focus · HN ↗
              you can't reason about currently because the entire economy will change before collapsing completely - there will be a poor class and a rich class
              1. geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
                I haven’t started reasoning anything. I was curious if you’ve thought this through yourself.
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.