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[–] 4 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Other booms don't necessarily cause contraction in the rest of the economy. That's what the bar graph is showing, it isn't just showing that there's a lot of data center construction, it's showing that construction of everything else is falling.

It definitely might be a new thing, though, because AI doesn't actually create value. In other resource booms, oil or lithium or whatever, there's a real material thing being sold for profit. With AI, there aren't even any profits. It's just gobbling investment.

It's definitely strange.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (2 children)

    because AI doesn’t actually create value

    What definition of value are you using?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Does it matter? It's unprofitable.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    Sure because there are lots of unprofitable companies that are now profitable, netflix, youtube, uber, spotify, amazon, etcetc

    Nearly every AI company in America right now is pretty much an early stage startup at best a few years old, and Americans have shown over and over and over that a good chunk of the time if you have a product people want and an insane amount of users (last I saw AI had over a billion MAU) then they can eventually turn a profit with it

    Saying they're unprofitable also doesn't determine if they deliver value or not, which they very clearly do

    I also forgot, Lemmy is a big money losing machine, does that mean it provides no value?

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