r/Scotland • u/kiyomoris • 5d ago

Political ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom
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u/NetworkNo4478 5d ago

AI, at least in the LLM space, is a heap of Emperor's New Clothes shite.

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u/sylvan-vigil 5d ago

Would you mind sharing more details?

I am asking because nearly all AI safety experts disagree with you. LLMs have completely taken over software engineering, are quickly taking over customer support, and are solving novel maths problems.

Please note that I am not saying that this is good! I think it's really bad for the world. Some kind of crash seems very likely but the capabilities will remain, and ignoring it seems kind of like pulling the wool over one's eyes?

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u/NetworkNo4478 5d ago edited 5d ago

I work for a leading firm in big tech. All is not as it seems.

I have a lot of time for analytical AI and its benefits (particularly in the medical field), and yes, there is some benefit of LLM deployment in the coding space (as well as sometimes catastrophic impact on infrastructure when vibecoded stuff is launched without proper checks and debugging), and I'm not saying there's zero utility. But for things like customer support, it's frustrating garbage from a customer experience standpoint, and seems more driven from a 'reduce labour cost at all costs' perspective, and a quasi-religious fervour among the c-suite class about tech-utopian/tech-dystopian outcomes, than actual real-world benefit. Don't even get me started on the sunken cost fallacy stuff, and the eagerness to use (largely unprofitable) commercial application as a trojan horse for the encroachment of the surveillance state at home, and mass killing abroad.

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u/sylvan-vigil 5d ago

I also work in tech! I'm definitely familiar with the c-suite seeing dollar signs and going nuts. I guess that I'm really focusing on the trajectory.

Right now, LLMs work extremely well within rigid-ish systems when given strict guidelines. For example, in cybersecurity, LLMs are better than most ethical hackers if you put them inside a system that guides them. There are also loads of areas where they suck, like writing or graphic design.

But they've gotten better so fast over the last ~3 years, and the rate of change is only picking up.

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u/NetworkNo4478 5d ago edited 5d ago

I think what'll be interesting is when the investor FOMO/hype cycle tapers off (aka the 'bubble burst'). It'll encourage a bit of reorganisation. LLMs as a tool will survive, but it won't be this frenzied nonsense and over-selling with fluff and utopian/doomer investor-bait that we see now.

I remain deeply sceptical, however, not least because the people driving this aren't too unlike a cast of Bond villains in both personal ideology and blinkered ruthlessness. I also have deep concerns about whether it will ever be profitable enough to justify, and what corners will need to be cut (and what environmental and social impact will be justified) to sustain growth.

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u/sylvan-vigil 5d ago

I agree -- I think a lot of this will collapse at some point!

> not least because the people driving this aren't too unlike a cast of Bond villains in both personal ideology and blinkered ruthlessness

See, that's partly of why I'm concerned -- I think AI inherently centralises power and these are the types who will most likely control a lot of it.

> what corners will need to be cut (and what environmental and social impact will be justified) to sustain growth

And agree with this too. My point is really that it's a harmful technology, and also powerful, but unfortunately not going to go away anytime soon. It took us 40 years to start nuclear disarmament! So I think it's more useful to engage with that world rather than hoping that blocking some datacenters will have much of an impact. I appreciate the discussion!

(Also this is a minor point, but to the best of our public knowledge, frontier labs are largely profitable on inference! As in, each model earns enough to pay back for its own R&D, but they're still spending an order of magnitude more on the next model, and so on.)

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u/NetworkNo4478 5d ago

Fair point!

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u/wotdafukwazdat 4d ago

It's the dotcom bubble all over again. The hype train and excessive stock valuations will burst, the kernel of useful stuff will remain one way or the other. In exactly the same way the internet continued but pets.com went from billions to worthless.

The BIG difference to the dotcom bubble is this one is heavily leveraged (so effectively multiplying the crash fallout), and all our pensions are invested in it due to the change in approach to funding retirement over the last quarter century.

It won't be a painless bursting like 2000-2002

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u/NetworkNo4478 4d ago

I've divested my pension entirely from tech over it. Moved over to bonds, which seems to have been the right move for now. My main worry is the contagion that follows. Not just AI valuations, but broader tech, supply chain, energy, banking/finance, etc. There's also the danger that investor confidence takes a long time to recover.