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.
Free to use exposed to the world AI can’t even figure out how many fingers people should have in images because it just pattern matches.
Paid mode exposed to the world AI that I have used also isn’t great at “Art” - but it’s wicked fast and effective at text processing. In a world that runs on printed orders, filled forms and directions, it wouldn’t take much of a “harness” for an LLM based agent to direct development of all the technology it needs to become self sufficient.