I think one problem with that comparison is that due to how energy intensive these datacentres are, they are very fast depreciating assets, unlike e.g. the telecom infrastructure that was (over-)built during the dot-com bubble, or the railway tracks from the era of Railway Mania.
The only reason a GPU-based compute-heavy datacentre built 5 years ago is still in operation today is the component shortage.
Without the current component shortages, those datacentres would just be so much less energy efficient per flop that it would literally be cheaper to just scrap the thing and rebuild it.
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This is not to say that we shouldn't build datacentres, but just that I wouldn't be so sure that the datacentres being built today won't be stranded assets long before they pay themselves off.
The only reason a GPU-based compute-heavy datacentre built 5 years ago is still in operation today is the component shortage.
Without the current component shortages, those datacentres would just be so much less energy efficient per flop that it would literally be cheaper to just scrap the thing and rebuild it.
_________
This is not to say that we shouldn't build datacentres, but just that I wouldn't be so sure that the datacentres being built today won't be stranded assets long before they pay themselves off.