Why Won't AI Data Centers Be Reused Like Dot-com Fiber?

Ed Zitron says AI data centers will not get the second life that leftover dot-com fiber got, because a half-finished AI site is useful for AI and not for much else.

Once telecom fiber was in the ground, later companies could use it. An unfinished AI data center, he says, needs about as much money in three, four, or ten years to finish as it needed at the start, and the electricity stays just as expensive. GPUs have no alternate use, and demand for them outside Anthropic and OpenAI is minuscule. People reach for the dot-com comparison, in his view, because it lets them believe that finance and tech can correct themselves and that the spending was not a waste. He does not think the buildings, or the chips sitting in storage, turn into another business when the boom stops.