📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: Disaster Strikes as Scientists Tunnel Into Core of Doom

A scientific mission to study Antarctica’s rapidly melting Thwaites Glacier ended in heartbreak over the weekend, when researchers’ instruments became stranded somewhere within half-mile tract of glacial ice.

According to the New York Times — which embedded with a team of researchers to install instruments beneath the infamous “Doomsday Glacier” — instruments meant to record data on the waters underneath Thwaites only made it about three-quarters of the way to their icy destination.

To create a hole reaching the Antarctic waters, scientists and engineers blasted a borehole around one foot in diameter and about 3,300 feet deep using hot water. Unless the team kept applying hot water, they estimated it would re-freeze in just 48 hours.

Their window of opportunity only lasted the weekend — if the scientists didn’t secure the instruments by Monday, an approaching front of bad weather would prevent helicopters from extracting them, effectively stranding them for an indeterminate period of time.

Despite successfully dipping a set of pilot instruments into the drink before pulling them back out again, their main equipment became entombed in ice before it reached its destination.

Keith Makinson, an oceanographer and drilling engineer told the NYT it was “absolutely gutting.”

“You get your window of opportunity,” he lamented. “You don’t have forever. And you see what you can do.

Still, those pilot instruments were a massive victory on their own. Per the newspaper, the data collected is the first ever recorded from beneath the glacier’s “main trunk,” showing the waters underneath are warm and quick-flowing.

Though it won’t provide one-to-two years of continuous data like the main instruments would have, it’s crucial evidence for scientists racing to discover why the Thwaites is melting much faster than expected. That research has potentially world-shifting implications, because many experts worry that if the glacier collapses, it could devastate coastlines across the planet.

“This is not the end,” the expedition’s chief scientist Won Sang Lee told the NYT. The data confirms that “this is the place to go, whatever challenges there are.”

More on Glaciers: The Sounds of a Dying Glacier Might Make You Cry

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📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: Tech Companies Showing Signs of Distress as They Run

AI companies are looking to spend trillions of dollars on data centers to power their increasingly resource-intensive AI models — an astronomical amount of money that could threaten the entire economy if the bet doesn’t pay off.

As the race to spend as much money as possible on AI infrastructure rages on, companies have become increasingly desperate to keep the cash flowing. Firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Oracle are exhausting existing debt markets — including junk debt, private credit, and asset-backed loans — in increasingly desperate moves, as Bloomberg reports, that are raising concerns among investors.

“The numbers are like nothing any of us who have been in this business for 25 years have seen,” Bank of America managing head of global credit Matt McQueen told Bloomberg. “You have to turn over all avenues to make this work.”

AI companies have accrued at least $200 billion in debt, per the publication. A more realistic figure is likely considerably higher, as that estimate doesn’t count undisclosed private deals.

Oracle announced over the weekend that it’s raising a staggering $45 billion to $50 billion in debt and equity sales to build additional cloud infrastructure capacity, plans that once again highlighted persistent concerns over a growing AI bubble. The company’s efforts to build out AI data centers have firmly pushed the company into a negative cash flow, leaving it on the hook for many billions of dollars in the coming years.

Elon Musk’s plans to merge his space company SpaceX with xAI ahead of a rumored blockbuster IPO are also raising eyebrows, suggesting the billionaire’s nascent AI startup is looking to secure even more funds for highly ambitious plans including sending data centers to space.

Despite the mounting capital expenditures, the industry still has a lot of work left to do to justify its heavy borrowing. Many AI companies have essentially given up on even pretending their short- or medium-term goal is to make money as they turn to measuring “ambition, not success,” as TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandom explained in a recent piece.

The tech itself is also starting to show diminishing returns with each new model release. Even the most powerful AI models are still struggling with the very basics, while suffering from the same drawbacks, including persistent hallucinations, that have plagued them for years now.

Demand could also be drying up, making it even harder to justify all of that debt. Early data suggests that subscriber growth for online services, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, could already be levelling off. Meanwhile, OpenAI has already turned to stuffing ads into its services in a desperate bid to stem the bleeding, a move that CEO Sam Altman called a “last resort” as recently as 2024.

The short-term prognosis is starting to look grim. A growing mountain of debt could add significantly to borrowing costs, making AI data centers an even more expensive endeavor for already cash-strapped AI companies.

At least for now, investors are still seeing dollar signs — though many are also fretting that it’s only a matter of time until the bubble pops.

“There’s a view that if you can build a data center, there’s so much demand for data centers that you just can’t lose — it’s like selling beer to sailors,” SLC Management co-head of private fixed income Andrew Kleeman told Bloomberg. “But anytime there’s truly innovative technology, there’s usually a massive overinvestment, and then there’s a correction.”

More on growing debt: Major AI Companies Aren’t Even Pretending to Make Money

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🔗 Sumber: futurism.com