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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. nicce · · focus · HN ↗
      > Do we really expect all the world’s corporations to suddenly up their annual spend by 1,000% on average? Why?

      If they keep replacing employees with AI, that is indeed the direction.

      1. sailfast · · focus · HN ↗
        It’s true - but then where do folks get money to buy from the businesses?

        Eventually this merry-go-round runs into some issues if we don’t figure out a way to make this huge productivity boom work.

        1. 0c3ca83 · · focus · HN ↗
          Folks stop having money to buy from businesses. Other businesses buy from them instead.

          There's no hard and fast rule that humans need to be involved in the economy, it's just that until recently, you needed to pay them in order to have an economy that worked.

          Corporations are legally people; give them enough brains, and they may become a real boy one day.

          1. riffraff · · focus · HN ↗
            Ah yes, the "Accelerando"[0] dead galaxy where all life's dead and only automated corporations remain.

            0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Accelerando" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Accelerando

            1. 0c3ca83 · · focus · HN ↗
              This is the world we&#x27;re building.
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