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

222 points · 335 comments · Betelbuddy

  1. jimmyjazz14 · · focus · HN ↗
    I can't think of any use case for AI that is a necessity for myself (or people I know), even if coding agents (which I use every day) disappeared tomorrow it would only be a minor inconvenience that I had to write my own code again. Now lets contrast that with electricity or internet, if either of those went offline I would be on a call trying to get them restored asap, now as far as I know neither of those industries bring in $6T in revenue.
    1. bretpiatt · · focus · HN ↗
      If agentic coding isn't dramatically changing your productivity you're getting left behind. There's a clear difference between vibe coding and AI assisted software / systems engineering from how I think about things. With AI you can be massively more productive. I do a lot of things beyond code and this is what I've built in 2026 (quick snip from scc, it has proper excludes for node_modules and other pulled in deps that I didn't build) from ~code/ on my dev box:

        ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Language            Files       Lines    Blanks  Comments       Code Complexity
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TypeScript         10,705   2,445,724   191,695    71,737  2,182,292    167,330
  JSON                1,435     604,218        58         0    604,160          0
  Rust                1,260     718,912    56,372    57,773    604,767     65,562
  Markdown            1,087     162,160    36,375         0    125,785          0
  SQL                 1,046     129,795     6,142     7,389    116,264      1,344
  Python                705     168,359    22,710    23,235    122,414     17,962
  JavaScript            657     209,397     8,824     7,587    192,986     45,383
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Total              19,009   4,903,248   353,289   186,252  4,363,707    326,094
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Estimated Cost to Develop (organic) $179,262,721
  Estimated Schedule Effort (organic) 98.79 months
  Estimated People Required (organic) 161.19
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Processed 206,138,543 bytes, 206.139 megabytes (SI)
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
      1. eurhe · · focus · HN ↗
        What have you actually produced tho?

        Dont talk LoC. Talk about projects.

        1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

          [deleted]

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