> OpenAI going bust would not cause those data centres to cease to exist, they’d still be there just owned for cheap by someone else that can run them at cost.

Someone would have to see value in that. Right now the value prop of AI is that maybe someday it'll get better and we'll be able to build useful, profitable consumer products on it. That's not really a great investment thesis, unless you're drunk on the hype.

Now that the market is sobering up a bit, will operating a "cheap" GPU datacenter at cost be worth anything? Not "future value", but present value. Can you turn a healthy profit running a GPU datacenter today? I doubt it.

At the risk of goomba fallacy

1. Guys so AI is a bubble but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful, just like dot com bubble

2. “Someone would have to see value in that. Right now the value prop of AI is that maybe someday it'll get better and we'll be able to build useful, profitable consumer products on it”

I don't understand, could you please explain?

> That's not really a great investment thesis, unless you're drunk on the hype.

To be fair it is very visibly getting better basically nonstop in the last 2 years at least.

I'll concede that point, but it's still not enough to justify buying a used GPU datacenter on the cheap. To do so you need to believe that by powering up and running all those GPUs you will be able to turn a profit before you go insolvent. Or failing that, you need to be able to con enough investors into believing it, and then somehow make it happen before they stop believing. So far the AI industry has been very good at conning investors, and cataclysmically bad at generating profits.

So if you're in the market for a used GPU datacenter even at fire sale prices you better have a solid plan to profitability. So far, it doesn't actually seem like there's anything you can do with those GPUs that will get there in any known or even guessable timeframe. That makes it a really fucking dumb idea lol.