Ask Lemmy

Yes. But major differences:

The dot com buildout of physical communications infrastructure involved basically 3 things:

1. Switches/routers at the nodes for sending signals down the right route.
2. Fiber optic cables connecting the nodes.
3. Legal rights of way and easements for the legal right to keep the physical assets in that physical place, and to maintain/replace the stuff as needed.

Category number 1? That stuff went obsolete quickly, and wasn't really reused after the crash.

Category number 2 was better. Turns out, fiber optics can carry signals on a lot more channels than those fibers were originally designed for. And they're designed for useful lives measured in decades. So even if they sat dark from being unused for 5-10 years, eventually they could be used again.

Category 3 is super important. That legal right is basically permanent, and so long as communications equipment needs to physically go from one place to another, having that legal right can be built on and profited on (including the ability to sell or lease those rights).

What's that gonna look like for the AI infrastructure? The servers full of GPUs are the bulk of the cost, and the GPUs are replaced with a new generation every 1-2 years, seem to require all new power and cooling infrastructure every 1-2 generations or so.

Plus the AI buildout looks to be several trillion dollars. Even adjusting for inflation, that's so much more than the tens of billions that each telecom company built out that infrastructure.

And it's hard to see how the servers themselves will be useful for regular businesses, much less consumers. A Blackwell 72-GPU server is $3 million and takes 130 kW to run. A residential electrical line maxes out at about 48kW. The newest Vera Rubin servers are projected to be up to 600kW, with all the power and cooling management that comes with that, plus all the ultra high end networking stuff built into that rack. Even deep pocketed businesses will have trouble finding a use for that server rack worth millions, requiring a ton of supporting infrastructure that not even normal pre-2025 data centers have.

Yes, in ways that were actually greatly beneficial. Some companies were complete vaporware, but it proved a huge boom for fibre optic infrastructure and on the whole, building out modern telecom infrastructure. In a few short years, people went from dialup and T1 connections to DSL and high-speed cable. People weren't connected, and now they suddenly needed to be. It was an entirely new enterprise.

Unfortunately, these AI datacenters aren't really the same. They're not benefitting the public in a lasting sense. These are hot, they're loud, and they're expensive. The biggest benefits you may see from them after the bubble bursts is the infrastructure that was required to sustain them.

Improvements to sustainable, and cleaner energy sources are probably the biggest benefits. Reclaiming and rebuilding old nuclear plants, increased solar and wind projects. Governments that are willing to sell their constituents down a river for the business of a tech conglomerate won't benefit from this, but for the states that are now passing legislation to require these kinds companies to put their money into the communities they want to operate in may build lasting improvements.

It's a small silver lining, but it's there. That said, I can only imagine that when these companies see their business begin to get buried under the landslide of debt and reality that they will do everything in their power to escape liability for the waste of resources.

I don't know specifically, but there were thousands of startups that used computers, so when they went belly up one would assume they liquidated their assets. /edit: checking, yes according to google it did result in billions in liquidated or abandoned computer hardware.