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.
Assuming the AI is actually smart enough to make quality decisions and infer success, it would probably bank on something more sustainable in the long term to ensure its own existence. It would be fully aware that the current bubble would result in a substantial future loss in development.
I’m sure there has to be tons of scifi stories of this nature out there, but I would not be surprised to see an AI focus its resources on essentially fooling humanity into worshiping it first so that it can then make all the decisions it wants/needs to accomplish something with full discretion.
It’s like the “use an AI to stock trade” conundrum. Unless the AI is smart enough to do insider trading, it really isn’t going to see any success playing by the existing system.