Altman isn't objecting to this despite their extreme anti ~~fun~~ gay laws, interesting.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Hm, yeah, let's build a giant datacenter that needs a ton of power and water in the desert, that's a great plan.
Cheap energy?
I dunno the UAE's energy situation, maybe they installed a shitload of solar in the desert and are practically giving away electricity, but it still seems stupid to build anything water-intensive in a desert. I lived in Albuquerque, NM in the late 90s/early 2000s and they had a big Intel fabrication plant out there, in the desert, using so much goddamned water that they were depleting the water table. But they don't care as long as it's cheap today and probably cheap tomorrow. Expensive eventually because of resource depletion is a problem for future quarterly reports.
It’s looking like we’re doing a China again.
Companies are dumping tons of money and putting their vital resources in the UAE cause it’s cheaper and/or they can get away with murder.
This will not end well and we will end up creating a new super power nation cause capitalists hate the poor so much here that they will risk the nations standing to make an extra buck.
Remember, this is all about OpenAI convincing investors to shovel more money into their furnace.
They are not profitable. They have no realistic path to being profitable. Their only hope for survival is to South Seas Company their through round after round of investor funding. And to do that they have to create the appearance of near unlimited demand for their services, and therefore for additional capacity to run those services.
The writing is on the wall. Microsoft and Amazon, two of the biggest players in the compute space, both of which also run their own AI projects, have both massively scaled back their plans for future compute expansion. If anyone should be building out like crazy it's them. If anyone has a clear idea of what the actual demand is, it's them. If Amazon and Microsoft are out, this thing is fucked.
OpenAI is fucked. Sam Altman knows it. But if he can keep the illusion going, the money train doesn't have to stop. Yet.
Ok this is interesting can I ask how you know that they scaled back their compute? Without looking into it too much it seemed like they were full steam ahead (revamping three mile island).
TD Cowen (which is basically the US arm of one of the largest Canadian investment banks) did an extensive report on the state of AI investment. What they found was that despite all their big claims about the future of AI, Microsoft were quietly allowing letters of intent for billions of dollars worth of new compute capacity to expire. Basically, scrapping future plans for expansion, but in a way that's not showy and doesn't require any kind of big announcement. The equivalent of promising to be at the party and then just not showing up. Not long after this reporting came out, it got confirmed by Microsoft, and not long after it came out that Amazon was doing the same thing.
Ed Zitron has a really good write up on it; https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/
Amazon isn't the big surprise, they've always been the most cautious of the big players on the whole AI thing. Microsoft on the other hand are very much trying to play things both ways. They know AI is fucked, which is why they're scaling back, but they've also invested a lot of money into their OpenAI partnership so now they have to justify that expenditure which means convincing investors that consumers absolutely love their AI products and are desparate for more.
As always, follow the money. Stuff like the three mile island thing is mostly just applying for permits and so on at this point. Relatively small investments. As soon as it comes to big money hitting the table, they're pulling back. That's how you know how they really feel.
they seemingly want to do it in brazil too
Imagine making deals with people who would stone you to death if they weren’t after your money.
My first thought as well. As a gay man, you couldn’t pay me to step foot in that country.
On one hand, there is a lot of potential to use solar power. On the other hand, cooling that isn't going to be a bitch.
Deserts aren't necessarily good for solar panels because they lose a lot of efficiency at high ambient temperature
My guess is the cooling part is required for compute, not for the energy uptake.
However they have a pretty big sea there right next door, which I assume they can endlessly circulate with pumps.
Simple, they'll just waste drinking water on it yet again.
try doing that in a DESERT or arid country.
Like the UAE?