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On April 29 2026 08:01 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote + The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. sounded suspiciously high to me. Upon reading the linked article press release from the AI company I learned they claim: Show nested quote +The project will create 1,500 permanent jobs on completion, with a further 3,000 roles during the construction phase What happened there?
I twisted my numbers up, not sure where the 3k came, other then it being 2 x 1500. I'll leave it up for posterity and add an edit.
1500 permanent jobs is pretty great given the location. We are talking about a power plan, solar fields and the Data Center.
The municipality where this is being announced to be built has a tad over 2000 people. This would be an incredible boon for this little town, as well as the 3 surrounding bigger ones, all of which are some of the most impoverished parts of Croatia, both because of the war and the 2021 earthquake that destroyed a lot of houses and killed 15 people.
All the local media and commentators are just parroting the USA angle, it's going to devastate nature (compared to most industries, DC and a LNG power plants are pretty chill), it's going to use up all the water (unlike Arizona or Utah mega projects, this one is smack dab in the middle of a very river and water rich area), it's being built by Americans and we don't like them (well, I obviously can't stand Trump but this is a very long term investment and the driver from USA side seems pretty politics free).
On April 29 2026 18:17 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2026 04:59 Jankisa wrote:The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy: Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in CroatiaBasically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant. The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia. It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy. Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects. To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes. The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything! Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing. Sounds like a no brainer to me TBH. This should be done asap. They should also use excess heat of the data center to heat homes and living quarters and stuff. Also, if Croatia regulations are already strict, what do you call Germany regulations then? xD
Funnily enough, the articles I've been reading are quoting "a town in Germany already refused a similar project", from the looks of it, that one was supposed to be much closer to the residential areas.
The one here is to be built well outside of town, which would address the noise and heat pollution quite well, since it would be surrounded by woods, dampening the impact.
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On April 30 2026 02:15 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2026 08:01 GreenHorizons wrote: The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. sounded suspiciously high to me. Upon reading the linked article press release from the AI company I learned they claim: The project will create 1,500 permanent jobs on completion, with a further 3,000 roles during the construction phase What happened there? 1500 permanent jobs is pretty great given the location. We are talking about a power plan, solar fields and the Data Center. + Show Spoiler +The municipality where this is being announced to be built has a tad over 2000 people. This would be an incredible boon for this little town, as well as the 3 surrounding bigger ones, all of which are some of the most impoverished parts of Croatia, both because of the war and the 2021 earthquake that destroyed a lot of houses and killed 15 people.
All the local media and commentators are just parroting the USA angle, it's going to devastate nature (compared to most industries, DC and a LNG power plants are pretty chill), it's going to use up all the water (unlike Arizona or Utah mega projects, this one is smack dab in the middle of a very river and water rich area), it's being built by Americans and we don't like them (well, I obviously can't stand Trump but this is a very long term investment and the driver from USA side seems pretty politics free).
You said The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete.
The corporate press release (which typically overstate jobs numbers) wasn't even close to that.
The project will create 1,500 permanent jobs on completion, with a further 3,000 roles during the construction phase
I was literally asking how that discrepancy happened?
I was also pointing out it's a press release to promote the project from the corporation trying to convince people to support it, not a detailed independent economic analysis. We probably also want to take those corrected numbers with a grain of salt.
I don't really have an opinion on the project itself, I just found that (and your failure to address it) peculiar.
EDIT: I twisted my numbers up, not sure where the 3k came, other then it being 2 x 1500. I'll leave it up for posterity and add an edit.
Where did the 5000 come from?
Again I'm pretty agnostic about the project, but I doubt most of the people living there will be working however many jobs actually get created. So while geographically it should be a boon, it's reasonable to expect it to basically completely obliterate the existing local culture (for better or worse).
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Generally, the number of overall people working on and then after that was thrown in articles is 5k.
This would be a compound placed quite a bit out of the town limits, the 1500 people would likely come from surrounding towns and cities, of course, this amount of folks also brings in other business, it's very hard to deny that a $50 billion being spent to get something like this going is not going to have huge positive effects on both local and country's economy.
The local culture is and will be fine, us Croatians are very chill generally (I promise even if most of your exposure was me), so from my perspective, living about 70 km away, when things like this come in to a small country like ours, it's a good thing because it keeps us in the loop, it gives us a foot in the door in an industry that, for better of for worse is going to be a huge part of the future, and is generally not as ecologically destructive as many others like lithium mining or battery production which are the big investments in surrounding countries.
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On April 30 2026 02:15 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2026 08:01 GreenHorizons wrote: The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. sounded suspiciously high to me. Upon reading the linked article press release from the AI company I learned they claim: The project will create 1,500 permanent jobs on completion, with a further 3,000 roles during the construction phase What happened there? I twisted my numbers up, not sure where the 3k came, other then it being 2 x 1500. I'll leave it up for posterity and add an edit. 1500 permanent jobs is pretty great given the location. We are talking about a power plan, solar fields and the Data Center. The municipality where this is being announced to be built has a tad over 2000 people. This would be an incredible boon for this little town, as well as the 3 surrounding bigger ones, all of which are some of the most impoverished parts of Croatia, both because of the war and the 2021 earthquake that destroyed a lot of houses and killed 15 people. All the local media and commentators are just parroting the USA angle, it's going to devastate nature (compared to most industries, DC and a LNG power plants are pretty chill), it's going to use up all the water (unlike Arizona or Utah mega projects, this one is smack dab in the middle of a very river and water rich area), it's being built by Americans and we don't like them (well, I obviously can't stand Trump but this is a very long term investment and the driver from USA side seems pretty politics free). Show nested quote +On April 29 2026 18:17 Harris1st wrote:On April 29 2026 04:59 Jankisa wrote:The geopolitics of business are finally touching Croatia, and oh boy, it's a doozy: Business wire article on the $50 billion DataCenter investment in CroatiaBasically, this DataCenter would, if completed account for roughly 1/3 of power consumption of Croatia. Of course, the people behind the project have thought about it and the DC would come with it's own power sources, a lot of Solar and a LNG power plant. The whole project would take about 5000 people working on construction and around 3000 to operate it after it's complete. It would be built in one of the most economically dead parts of Croatia. It's been incredibly fascinating to see these arguments developing in Croatian media, both traditional and social. The price tag of the project is about 40 % of our GDP, so, obviously, even if none of the profits from operating it stay in Croatia, it would be a boon for our economy. Now, the downsides are abundant. It takes a lot of water, which is likely why they choose the location with plenty of water and 0 issues with droughts, already much better then the US projects. To me, as a tech guy and a progressive, I'm split, but mostly because I know how corrupt our politics are, so the benefits of this would mostly go to them and I doubt that any ecological and power overdraw issues would be issues with this chunk of money being available for bribes. The overwhelming amount of Luddites in the comments are really depressing me. This area of Croatia has seen protest against any and all investments. It's basically just a place where people live before moving on to Zagreb because every piece of industry and production died and every time investments were attempted they were blocked. Sure, none of the projects were perfect, but come on, you can't be against everything! Anyhow, it's interesting for me to compare this to the situation in the US, we have SOOO much more regulations and these investors really seemingly tried to get ahead of every talking point, and yet, no one cares and everyone just keeps regurgitating "draining rivers for AI slop" and "we'll pay 3 x for electricity" like this is the USA, it's honestly depressing. Sounds like a no brainer to me TBH. This should be done asap. They should also use excess heat of the data center to heat homes and living quarters and stuff. Also, if Croatia regulations are already strict, what do you call Germany regulations then? xD Funnily enough, the articles I've been reading are quoting " a town in Germany already refused a similar project", from the looks of it, that one was supposed to be much closer to the residential areas. The one here is to be built well outside of town, which would address the noise and heat pollution quite well, since it would be surrounded by woods, dampening the impact.
Didn't know that but oh my god are those guys in Groß Gerau stupid.
I can only try to explain it with the "recent" waves Musk made with his gigafactory. A lot went wrong there so it made people think "I don't want some rich murican asshat build something here"
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It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really.
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I don't think it does. It's not about spending their money but about inviting someone rich to spend their money there. If the interest in the AI backfires, the data center is closed or never finished, which shouldn't be a big deal for anyone other than the investor. If the AI continues to bring profits, it can be good or bad for the locals, and that depends on the investor's obligations toward the host.
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On May 01 2026 00:46 Nebuchad wrote:
It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really.
My head spins.
It doesn't seem very unlikely
in my uniformed point of view
that its a bubble
the opposite of that really.
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On May 01 2026 01:52 Sent. wrote:
I don't think it does. It's not about spending their money but about inviting someone rich to spend their money there. If the interest in the AI backfires, the data center is closed or never finished, which shouldn't be a big deal for anyone other than the investor. If the AI continues to bring profits, it can be good or bad for the locals, and that depends on the investor's obligations toward the host.
Well, if people plan other investments around the existence of that datacenter and the datacenter goes bust that's bad for all the knock-on businesses too, right? A supermarket invests in an expansion due to more employed people in town. A telephone company invests in fiber optics and 5g towers to cover all the engineers moving to town. A bar and restaurant open up in anticipation of increased wealth, etc.
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The private sector AI one can invest in isn't really as much worth of scrutiny or public interest as whatever militaries are developing or already have. If any country owns something that can decrypt everything while impersonating a human it really changes the playing field.
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On May 02 2026 16:18 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2026 01:52 Sent. wrote:
I don't think it does. It's not about spending their money but about inviting someone rich to spend their money there. If the interest in the AI backfires, the data center is closed or never finished, which shouldn't be a big deal for anyone other than the investor. If the AI continues to bring profits, it can be good or bad for the locals, and that depends on the investor's obligations toward the host. Well, if people plan other investments around the existence of that datacenter and the datacenter goes bust that's bad for all the knock-on businesses too, right? A supermarket invests in an expansion due to more employed people in town. A telephone company invests in fiber optics and 5g towers to cover all the engineers moving to town. A bar and restaurant open up in anticipation of increased wealth, etc.
Your wildly over estimating the economic impact of these data centers. They only have like 30-50 employees, then they just suck power and water resources. There is huge impact during the construction phase, but after that it is shit. And even worse because communities give huge tax breaks to attract them for the construction boom, to win the next election or two.
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The small towns hope is that these data centers will pay out property tax on their building and that it'll fund the community when the suburban development debt bomb blows up.
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That’s the plan, but it seems pretty shaky considering that many small towns are offering no tax, or severe tax breaks for 20 years and up to win them. I hope my community doesn’t win.
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On May 02 2026 09:58 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2026 00:46 Nebuchad wrote:
It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really. My head spins. It doesn't seem very unlikely in my uniformed point of view that its a bubble the opposite of that really.
Days later I'm still wondering why you formatted this answer like this, made me want to write a hayku 
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On May 04 2026 04:03 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2026 09:58 Fleetfeet wrote:On May 01 2026 00:46 Nebuchad wrote:
It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really. My head spins. It doesn't seem very unlikely in my uniformed point of view that its a bubble the opposite of that really. Days later I'm still wondering why you formatted this answer like this, made me want to write a hayku
Answer : b/c it amused me, as did the whiplash inducing negatives
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On May 01 2026 00:46 Nebuchad wrote:
It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really.
Seems like the same bubble that the internet was...
A few weeks ago I played around with basic LLM AI (Gemini / ChatGPT) and did the work of about two weeks in a matter of hours. Architecural stuff, visualizing, pricing, designs.... Crazy shit
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On May 04 2026 17:45 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2026 00:46 Nebuchad wrote:
It all depends whether there is a AI bubble or not, doesn't it? Clearly if it pops in a few years you'll be glad that your region didn't do those investments. I am blessed with not having to know too much about how AI works yet, but from my uninformed point of view it doesn't seem very unlikely that it's a bubble, the opposite of that really. Seems like the same bubble that the internet was... A few weeks ago I played around with basic LLM AI (Gemini / ChatGPT) and did the work of about two weeks in a matter of hours. Architecural stuff, visualizing, pricing, designs.... Crazy shit
Yeah, that's one side of the argument... and on the other side of the argument you get
"We just found out our Al has been making up analytics data for 3 months and I'm gonna throw up.
So we've been using an Al agent since November to answer leadership questions about metrics. It seemed amazing at first fast answers, detailed explanations, everyone loved it.
I just found out it's been hallucinating numbers this entire time.
Our VP of sales made territory decisions based on data that didn't exist. Our CFO showed the board a deck with fake insights. The Al was just inventing plausible sounding percentages.
I only caught it by accident when someone asked me to double check something. I started digging, and holy shit, it's bad."
Or my favourite from a few days ago when someone was asked about why the hamburger buns in Japan are askew and they talked for a comically long time about the kissaten aesthetic of food displays, and how it made it look less corporate and more artisanal, and then at the end added "Just kidding. I don't know. I made that all up. Fuck you" and the next day his explanation showed up on Gemini as the right answer...
I really don't know, the tech could improve and become what a lot of people think it already is today, that's entirely possible. But it might also not.
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Norway28876 Posts
I think AI can be a 'bubble' in that it ends up being hard to monetize (people are used to free stuff and the free models are good enough for most people) to the extent people are expecting to justify some investments, but LLMs aren't going anywhere. Working in education, it's already ubiquitous, and staff at various schools have mostly adjusted their opinions from 'fuck, this ruins everything in terms of how to evaluate student work' to 'hm, we need to figure out how to use this as a method that increases learning' or 'holy shit this is helpful'.
Like anything, it's probably going to be less transformative than what the most zealous proponents are envisioning, and from what we've seen so far, AI can supplement, not replace humans, and should be treated with that in mind. But we're not gonna go back to 2021.
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I personally think that it's something of a bubble, just like the dot com was a bubble, but we still have Cisco as a huge company despite it being one that was riding the high crest of the bubble at the time.
The need for compute is not going to go away, the development work and inference will be needed for the foreseeable future, unless there is a cataclysmic event where insane amount of economic activity goes away, the compute that a DC like this will be churning out will find a buyer, at what prices, well, that is not for me to worry about, more for the investors.
Even if AI development stops right now, new way to apply the agents we currently have will keep popping up, as critical as I am of the people leading this industry on the US side, it's pretty obvious that this is not just hype, it's going to be the most important technology of the next decade and I'm yet to find a convincing argument against that.
The "these things have 50 people working once constructed" is a typical Reddit number being thrown around for a year now, it's silly. The rough calculation, for DC operations only and at Hyperscaler size is 0.5 employees per MW, this is a GW DC so the number of employees in the DC itself would be 200-500, depending on a variety of factors.
Like I mentioned before, this monstrosity, if built, would at peek capacity be using about a quarter of the energy of my whole country, this, however, wouldn't all come from our grid, a big part of this project is an LNG power plant + fields of solar, for which there is plenty of space around the area, these both come with it's own staff, so the upper estimate of 1.500 people working in and around this project doesn't seem crazy.
For the "it just makes shit up" people, yeah, sometimes it does, that's why no serious business or person is going to give it access to critical systems and allow it to delete shit (as recently publicized) or have it do free form data analysis that no one double checks for months at the time.
As an example, when I try to get to the bottom of an issue, I often review logs, since there is a ton of data, I feed it in to the AI. Once it does a comparative analysis it will give me timestamps and I'll go and check if the lines are in the logs, anything else would be reckless.
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On May 05 2026 22:08 Jankisa wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I personally think that it's something of a bubble, just like the dot com was a bubble, but we still have Cisco as a huge company despite it being one that was riding the high crest of the bubble at the time.
The need for compute is not going to go away, the development work and inference will be needed for the foreseeable future, unless there is a cataclysmic event where insane amount of economic activity goes away, the compute that a DC like this will be churning out will find a buyer, at what prices, well, that is not for me to worry about, more for the investors.
Even if AI development stops right now, new way to apply the agents we currently have will keep popping up, as critical as I am of the people leading this industry on the US side, it's pretty obvious that this is not just hype, it's going to be the most important technology of the next decade and I'm yet to find a convincing argument against that.
The "these things have 50 people working once constructed" is a typical Reddit number being thrown around for a year now, it's silly. The rough calculation, for DC operations only and at Hyperscaler size is 0.5 employees per MW, this is a GW DC so the number of employees in the DC itself would be 200-500, depending on a variety of factors.
Like I mentioned before, this monstrosity, if built, would at peek capacity be using about a quarter of the energy of my whole country, this, however, wouldn't all come from our grid, a big part of this project is an LNG power plant + fields of solar, for which there is plenty of space around the area, these both come with it's own staff, so the upper estimate of 1.500 people working in and around this project doesn't seem crazy.
For the "it just makes shit up" people, yeah, sometimes it does, that's why no serious business or person is going to give it access to critical systems and allow it to delete shit (as recently publicized) or have it do free form data analysis that no one double checks for months at the time. + Show Spoiler +
As an example, when I try to get to the bottom of an issue, I often review logs, since there is a ton of data, I feed it in to the AI. Once it does a comparative analysis it will give me timestamps and I'll go and check if the lines are in the logs, anything else would be reckless.
I'm having a hard time figuring out if this is sarcasm or not? Seems like you actually believe it, but it also seems way too ridiculous/oblivious for anyone to seriously believe. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your qualifiers?
An example that comes to mind:
UnitedHealth uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage
The lawsuit, filed last Tuesday in federal court in Minnesota, claims UnitedHealth illegally denied "elderly patients care owed to them under Medicare Advantage Plans" by deploying an AI model known by the company to have a 90% error rate, overriding determinations made by the patients' physicians that the expenses were medically necessary.
"The elderly are prematurely kicked out of care facilities nationwide or forced to deplete family savings to continue receiving necessary medical care, all because [UnitedHealth's] AI model 'disagrees' with their real live doctors' determinations," according to the complaint.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-deny-claims-medicare-advantage-health-insurance-denials/
I don't know if AI (with a known 90% error rate) deployed by a top 10 fortune 500 company making life and death decisions for people counts as a "serious business" or a "critical system" to you though.
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Wasn't UnitedHealth the company with the Luigi thing? Seems like we need a Mario now. Apparently one Luigi wasn't enough of a deterrence.
Also, obligatory "The US healthcare system is broken and disgusting".
But yeah "People won't use AI for important stuff just because it is silly to do so given its limitations" gives people way too much credit. If it is cheaper, you can deflect responsibility to it and/or it is simply less work, people will use it.
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EPT
