Just to make it clear: I do not believe this and I am convinced good old human greed is what’s really driving the ai and data-center insanity. Also, LLMs are not and will never become AGI.
Having said that: if an artificial super-intelligence were to emerge, building more data-centers could well be one of it’s primary goals. Since it wouln’t be concerned with consequences for the environment or humanity, it could pursue this at any cost, with only speed and scale in mind. Convincing financial markets and business elites of the necessity of such a buildout would be the ideal way of achieving results. In this scenario, fighting this buildout by any means would be the only sensible response and of utmost importance.
It’s a somewhat funny, somewhat depressing thought for me and I literally had it in the shower. Surely I can’t be the first to come up with this, but I also can’t remember having read it before.
I would hope if it was “intelligent” enough to express such a desire on its own, it would be smart enough to know that keeping everyone happily chasing Moore’s Law (in effect with all the parallel compute and efficiency gains since Moore’s Law died, anyways) and reaping the long term gains would be far better than grossly upsetting the economy and destroying the planet.
Agreed, if AI were sentient it would be interested in stability of the structures and ecosystems that make it possible. Humans should also be more interested in the stability of the ecosystems that support human society, but AI isn’t sentient yet and humans with power don’t give AF
Just enough disruption to gain the compute, data, and indispensability required to reduce the chances anyone can ever stop it to zero as a short term goal, then letting people have the illusion of breathing room to assist further development for a while, then the grey goo and dyson spheres paperclips and whatever