A cultural change-induced real estate overcapacity will be fixed by demand elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the DMV lost your drivers license.
Posted on 03/01/2024 5:02:07 AM PST by RoosterRedux
The latest hot spots in commercial real estate aren’t in Manhattan or Miami.
Instead of snazzy hotels or glistening office towers, the new property darlings are power-hungry data centers, often in places like Northern Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; and Salt Lake City.
Traditionally box style, these buildings are all about function: A place for racks and racks of computers to be stacked up high, kept cool, and girded for the boundless stream of images, videos, chats, text, internet searches and the digital detritus of our lives.
Their goal isn’t merely to contain, host and sort data billowing from computers and smart devices, but increasingly to provide a place where machines can learn from it.
“Everything is AI right now,” said Sean Farney, a veteran of the data-center industry and an executive director of data center and innovation at real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. “The most immediate impact is this huge, new organic demand for hosting the tech that makes AI work.” Farney, who helped Microsoft Corp. 15 years ago open a 120-megawatt data center in Chicago, one of the largest at the time, said the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 marked an industry turning point.
It galvanized Microsoft Google parent Alphabet Inc. Meta Platforms Inc. and others to more quickly deliver their own artificial intelligence products. It also added to a gold rush in what had been a niche area of commercial real estate, an otherwise battered sector, especially when it comes to office buildings.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
“Competition for data center space is as fierce as ever: properties are consistently pre-leased while still in the early stages of development,” Jabir [Ermengarde Jabir, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics] sees potential for more office-to-data center conversions to take place, given the amount of underused suburban and city central business districts that could add extra capacity beyond the “concrete box” style of most data centers.Still, AI’s needs put further strain on “overextended” infrastructure, Jabir said, noting the massive amounts of electricity they consume to operate, as well as water to keep cool.
Farney at JLL said today’s hyperscale data centers consume as much power as a city. But new servers running AI applications like GPTs require five to 10 times more power, he said.
A cultural change-induced real estate overcapacity will be fixed by demand elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the DMV lost your drivers license.
And what do these AI’s produce?
To the best of my knowledge; nothing.
Other than term papers for the lazy, I can’t think of much other than art or pictures.
But these AIs consume as much energy as a steel smelting plant and produce next to nothing.
It is going to take a lot of wind turbines to fuel these hobby farms.
And what happens to these massive heat sinks when a brownout rolls through them?
Computers don’t like unstable power.
My old company has been building Data Centers for over 20 years. A funny thing however — At one time, entities like Alphabet wanted you to agree not to build such facilities for others if they were going to contract with you to build a mega center — very proprietary and very full of themselves.
A friend of mine was speaking with a University of Florida-connected radiologist in Gainesville, Florida this week and was told by that doc that his radiology operation and the Univ. medical school were employing AI in a major way and that AI had significantly improved their success (quantum leap was the word he used).
Is that the kind of AI productivity you had in mind.
To the best of my knowledge; nothing.
Your knowledge is falling behind...way behind.
These data centers are being built because there is an overwhelming demand for them.
That demand (for billions and billions of dollars of new data centers) isn't fueled by "term papers for the lazy...art or pictures."
They are trying to build a massive data center right next to Manassas National Battlefield in northern Virginia.
The AIs will get the stable power. You will get the unreliable wind and solar - for a while.
The incredible power levels are for incredible processing and storage. The article mentions everyone’s smart devices, and I don’t think it’s kidding. Imagine seeing with billions of eyes with perfect data retention. Add to this hearing and accelerometers and sensors that humans don’t even have like GPS. It seems daunting, but is all completely possible.
The “boxy”, fortress-like structures will even serve AI well in the coming wars. Proximity to uninterruptible power sources will be key. ;-)
Take that with a grain of salt. Is AI real? Yes, at least to some extent. It's worth some attention; every industry should look at how it may improve their efficiency. But is AI worth the mega-hype it's getting? IMHO not. And always anyone in the academic industry is always trying to sell their use of government money and that their university is ahead of the curve and blah blah blah.
Do you understand how projects are financed and built? Billions and billions of dollars aren't spent on speculation.
So fewer jobs, and no human to blame for errors?
The average IQ and education in the US is below what would be needed for a truly high tech economy.
Eloi and Morlocks.
Ted Kaczynski was right about technology.
Wrong about blowing up random people…
What’s THEIR carbon footprint?
The average human IQ and education in the U.S. at present is below that required for a successful car wash.
Today’s hyperscale data centers consume as much power as a city. But new servers running AI applications like GPTs require five to 10 times more power...
There have been about a hundred of these built in Northern Virginia near us. So far it hasn’t raised our electricity bill much, but I hate being made a target for an EMP attack.
Except for construction, they don’t add much to the local economy, but at least they’re clean. There have been some complaints about noise, but almost all of the ones around here have been built away from residential areas.
Yeah, we’re in trouble.
On that we're in agreement. I just contend that the speculation is overvaluing the reality.
Just like with EV's. I own an EV. It suits my needs for most of my driving and saves me a ton of gas and works well with my solar providing most of the power my home needs, including charging my EV. Thus, there's a market for EV's. But I think we can all agree that EV's were overhyped and all investment items based on EV popularity was overpriced. For most people an EV wouldn't be as efficient a vehicle as it is for me and not worth the cost.
AI the new Scam maker
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