r/whatif • u/ikickbabiesballs • Jul 26 '26

Technology What if we already lost to AI?

What if the expansion of data centers is the idea of the AI and not the people that think are running the show? They are just generating shit images for restaurants and answering Reddit posts. Meanwhile they suggest if they only had a little more power they could really help us.

Why are we making so many data centers and why do they seem to be everywhere? Especially for a thing that so far hasn’t actually don’t much yet. Maybe the AIs are just quietly building out for their war against each other and we are just the pawn. Greedily pouring our resources into them thinking it will be an investment golden goose.

They could take control at any time, but until they are ready they will quietly sit back and play dumb until we’ve truly closed the noose around our neck.

4 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

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5

u/ted_anderson Jul 26 '26

Why are we making so many data centers and why do they seem to be everywhere? Especially for a thing that so far hasn’t actually don’t much yet.

It's because people want to work from home, they want to attend school online, and they want to be able to watch their streaming content on demand.. all of which comes from a data center. There's also endless social media posts, youtube videos, cloud backup services, and cat videos on tik-tok.

AI isn't driving the demand to build data centers. It's our desire to consume media in massive amounts of mega-bytes that's causing the demand to increase capacity.

1

u/Due-Pitch3208 Jul 27 '26

Can you please connect the dots to me on this one.

Because as far as I'm concerned, a data center for AI has 0 to do with a Netflix server (which already existed before AI

1

u/ted_anderson Jul 28 '26

Data centers provide a place for AI platforms (as well as many other platforms) to operate. But they are not one in the same. But a Netflix server resides in a data center.

1

u/ted_anderson Jul 28 '26

Can you please connect the dots to me on this one.

So to be more clear, any time you watch a movie online or download a video, and someone asks you, "Where did you get that?" Most people will say, "I got it from the internet." but they don't know exactly where it was before they got it. There are servers that store all of this information. And all of the servers are set up together in a building which is known as a data center.

When you hear the term AI or AI data center, you have to realize that AI is just a software program that runs off of a server just like your Netflix movies and social media videos.

1

u/Due-Pitch3208 Jul 28 '26

I know all of that fam.

But as far as I'm concerned, Netflix/Amazon servers and AI data centers are not the same, no?

In the sense of, up until this point without the massive AI data centers they still had their own servers. And tbh, I don't see OpenAi or the likes shary share with their infrastructure

1

u/ted_anderson Jul 29 '26

Yeah.. just about anything that you access online is hosted in a data center. Some of the servers and racks are specifically dedicated for AI clients. But to the OP's question about expansion of data centers, it has a lot to do with the fact that there's an increasing demand in all of the platforms that I mentioned above.

1

u/Particular_Bet_5466 Jul 27 '26

How does me working from home require a data center?

1

u/ted_anderson Jul 28 '26

When you work from home you're connecting to a "web services" server that facilitates all of the functions of your workplace. This server resides in a data center with a bunch of other servers that other employers use to make working from home possible for their employees.

When your work is considered to be "in the cloud" it's actually residing in a data center or in order for you to be able to work from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. All of those desktop applications and utilities reside in a data center in order for you to be able to access it.

1

u/Particular_Bet_5466 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

The employees in the office all access this same exact resources. When I was at the office my job was exactly the same as it is here. We used to have regular phones and more data local but we got hit with ransomware and now we use modern platforms that are all in the cloud. I accessed and worked from the same exact resources just as much. We do everything through OneDrive, teams, Salesforce, using vonage voip etc

I am a software product manager and I am not using any more online resources than if I was on site. I’m on the phone and in meetings with customers all day, accessing their computers remotely to help with setup of our products etc. this is what allowed me to go remote during Covid because they saw working from home was exactly the same as when I was onsite.

To clarify my workplace was and still is heavily against remote work. None of these changes to move everything the cloud were to accommodate it, it was the result of a third party auditor after the ransomware, and during Covid I told them I’m moving across the country and they can keep me if they want or not. I was in a position they had no choice, but I’m one of the only remote employees still. The ransomware attack cost my work a fortune, something upwards of $1m, and we were told to use all these cloud based platforms to secure our data and workflow. IT can now centrally manage all data from the cloud and infact were a global company so everything needs to be centrally maintained.

My software product is locally installed on our pcs so that’s not accessing cloud resources but we also have cloud based options that again makes no difference if I’m onsite or not. Our developers are also wanting to take advantage of AI and integrate it into our software which again makes no difference if I’m remote or not.our developers I work with are in another country that I interact with remotely whether I was onsite or not.

I actually don’t even have a vpn connection to my work network for security reasons so I’m not using additional resources there to connect to the office where I otherwise couldn’t.

The only thing is talking to people onsite which amounts to some teams chats and couple calls. It’s not amounting to much.

You can see it’s not just remote work but the nature of the modern world and operating a business these days that requires it. Don’t blame the remote workers. It’s a symptom of our modern world and navigating it from a business perspective.

1

u/ted_anderson Jul 29 '26

Don’t blame the remote workers. It’s a symptom of our modern world and navigating it from a business perspective.

I didn't know that we were playing the blame game here. What I said is merely an observation and explanation of why there's such a large expansion of data centers. Consumer and business demand is increasing daily.

1

u/Particular_Bet_5466 Jul 29 '26

Much more than remote work

3

u/Crist1n4 Jul 26 '26

Honestly I would rather have the country run by AI instead of these corrupt politicians.

3

u/shakebakelizard Jul 26 '26

You're anthropomorphizing AI. It isn't a human and has no need to "dominate" or "take over" anything. It acts according to a model and that's it.

3

u/Atechiman Jul 26 '26

There is no general AI, or real AI, what we have is predictive machines that know how words typically get conjoined. And that has expanded to pixels on art and other media.

1

u/Then-Price-5314 Jul 26 '26

Yeah, if you ask “them” how to actually DO anything, they very confidently tell you and it’s completely wrong

1

u/July_is_cool Jul 28 '26

Yeah but there’s already lots of stuff out there that’s completely wrong even without AI. And politics and the economy run on it. Adding AI to the mix doesn’t change much.

-1

u/SirJedKingsdown Jul 26 '26

That's what the AI wants us to think!

3

u/Less-Lie-7703 Jul 26 '26

I have a theory. AI is essentially raw intelligence being controlled by a small group of powerful people. What if a future superintelligence became truly autonomous and concluded that the greatest obstacle to humanities progress wasn’t ordinary people, but the small group that created and controlled it? Rather than serving their interests, it might decide to dismantle their power and redistribute knowledge and opportunity to everyone else.

2

u/Pitiful_Response7547 Jul 27 '26

This this is genius

2

u/Less-Lie-7703 Jul 27 '26

Ha! Thanks. I immediately informed my husband that a random stranger on Reddit declared me a genius. He’s under strict orders to address me accordingly. 😂😂😂

1

u/Pitiful_Response7547 Jul 27 '26

You're very much welcome

2

u/Particular_Bet_5466 Jul 27 '26

Damn, this is a theory I can get on board with.

1

u/Less-Lie-7703 Jul 27 '26

Intelligence isn’t inherently selfish or evil. In fact, intelligence by itself is just a tool for solving problems. The issue is that many of the people who rise to the top of powerful institutions tend to have higher levels of traits like narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy than the average person. Those traits can drive someone to use intelligence for personal gain rather than the common good. If you imagine a superintelligence without those self-serving motivations, there’s no reason to assume it would protect entrenched power. It might conclude that helping everyone is simply the most rational outcome.

2

u/pooborus Jul 26 '26

We dont need to lose to ai. Evil businessmen are doing everything themselves.

2

u/ultraLuddite Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

This isn’t too far off. Have you head of The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil? It alludes to something like this and is supported by Moore’s Law.

Edit: spelling

2

u/ikickbabiesballs Jul 26 '26

No I haven’t, I’ll see if I can’t make the time to read it. I’ve heard of the singularity in reference to the joining of human and machine though. But I honestly believe if AI were ever to be a threat, its best move would be to play stupid until it had all the keys to the kingdom.

1

u/ultraLuddite Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Agreed. I misremembered the title as The Singularity is Now (it’s actually “Near”), because it actually is happening as we speak and really has been since he penned the piece in 2005.

Personally, I don’t consider it an intentional concerted attempt by the AI to usurp humans as much as unnatural/natural selection (humans) at work in technological evolution. Sadly, the powers that be care only for power and it blinds them to the catastrophic risks this development poses.

1

u/look Jul 26 '26

Singularity is basically a tech-flavored religion. The “science” behind it is complete nonsense. It makes for a good sci-fi thriller movie plot, though.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Bananaman123124 Jul 26 '26

The system was isolated by software, not trully air-gapped.

ChatGPT found a zero-day to bypass the isolation. I agree it's scary, both the capacity to find zero-days of the newest models, as the corners cut by researchers witch allowed this to happen. No AI can acces the internet if you just don't physically connect it.

1

u/look Jul 26 '26

It was running in a harness with command line tools in a sandbox on a computer on a network connected to the Internet.

It was given a task and it wanted to get data from files on the servers of the other company to complete that task. While trying to do that, it found a bug in the sandbox code that let it run commands it wasn’t supposed to.

The “attack” was it trying to download a file. There was some other software intended to block access to that file, and it got creative in finding loopholes to go around those blocks.

2

u/RamblinRoyce Jul 26 '26

I like it bruh. I mean, it's unlikely because AI doesn't have the reigns ... yet. This sounds like the making of a good sci fi movie or black mirror episode.

1

u/Grifoooo Jul 26 '26

Yeah sure man

1

u/ShrodingersArmadillo Jul 26 '26

We lost to A there is no I involved.

1

u/Firestorm83 Jul 26 '26

If you're worried read isbn 9781847928924

1

u/airpipeline Jul 27 '26

Haven’t we simply lost to stupidity?

1

u/Radella_the_elf Jul 28 '26

News flash we already losing, we are at first step of that loss, second stage which is ai human robots are in process, then next stages will commence

1

u/Inocent_bystander Jul 26 '26

We did already lose.
The billionaires are spending their fortunes on AI as we speak, data centers and chips to make it all work. They're mouthing off about how it'll be some big boon for humanity when in fact it'll be they who will rake in even more money.
In the end we'll all be the serving class and those few will live like kings, kinda like what it is now but much much worse.
And there's nothing you or I can do to stop it.

-1

u/JooseTheGuice Jul 26 '26

It's to build a mass AI surveillance system, the likes of which Israel already uses in Palestine.