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Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> ...but there are a lot of ways to reimagine residential that could be compatible (all electric, shared bathrooms, etc.)

And windows.

Sure there are ways to "reimagine" residential to accommodate office floorplans, but I feel that for the most part those "reimagings" would be at best depressing and probably worse. "Windowless SRO room" is not an acceptable living situation for most, and you could probably do much better with a different building on the same land.

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The vacant office spaces will be converted to data centers. What was once a sea of beige cubicles and coffee stained grey carpet, and human occupants, will be replaced with racks of glimmering LEDs and GPUs running AI models that will have replaced many of the same humans' jobs. One day what is YOUR cubicle might be occupied by a GPU cluster running a GPT 5.0 model fine-tuned to do YOUR job. What role most humans will play in that world, if any, remains ambiguous and the standard of their living accommodations is mostly certainly up in the air. Maybe GPT 5.0 will decide that the best use of some office towers is conversion to "windowless SRO rooms," in order to herd all the unemployed humans into an AI robot controlled "New Kowloon Walled City." Of course not all of of the floor plans in "New Kowloon" will repurposed only into "residential" spaces. Some sections will need to house automated logistical warehouses, in order to deliver Amazon packages and groceries to the human "residents." It's even possible that GPT 5.0 will decide that it makes sense to repurpose some of the offices into small, automated factories, like the noodle factories in Kowloon. Let's hope we can reach this utopia before a crash in the commercial office market brings down the whole house cards for real this time around.

The shared bathroom idea to me is the most depressing part. I could deal with a lack of windows I guess (put up a big TV screen with a video feed from the outside), but having to share a bathroom with strangers is gross.

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