The killer app is “you can’t build your own cloud because we’re hoarding all the compute”

Even if AI takes off the way people hope it will, that does not mean that data center investments will pay out.

Local models exist and are a viable alternative (partially to substantially to completely) to sending every query to a centralized data center that is extracting profit from every token.

On top of that, everyone is now aware of the risks of tech dependency, and big players, the ones that would be sending their money to OpenAI or Anthropic, are the ones best able to declare their independence.

I've heard theories that I find convincing that the real plan is to transition us to a surveillance-based tiered economy in which the wealthy hoard control over the means of production and then spend generously to pay the largest segment of the economy -- tech surveillance -- to police the restless masses.

In this framing, the technology becomes profitable in the same way as healthcare: it's essential. Once something is essential, its demand is unconstrained, and so its price-setting power isn't based on the price customers consider a good value, it's based on what fraction of their wealth and income they are able to hand over.

If the top 10% of Americans who participate in the investment economy conclude that ongoing real-time tracking of every American's location and sentiments is necessary to prevent a revolution, paying to build and maintain datacenters is a must. It doesn't matter what it costs.

This 10% then becomes the new real economy, and everyone in the 90% just become essentially livestock.

In order to make $6 trillion by 2031, every human being on earth would have to spend at least $150 per year on average.

Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot if you're already paying a $100 a month for a Claude max subscription or whatever, but consider that the vast majority of people don't pay for any AI at all, and have no interest in ever paying for it.

Also, $150 is a best-case scenario where revenue is 100% profit. In actual reality, the profit margins are much, much lower, and may not even exist at all!