Cars still can't even fully drive themselves in the road that are designed specifically for them. but now they will be building datacenter in 3D space with insane complexity and power levels? With what tech? Makes no sense
1. You assume that the recent change is that we are close to building in space, but actually what's changed is that it's becoming clearer what might be commercially useful to build in space. Not so long ago, the best idea for commercializing space was satellites taking photos of Earth, or somehow making spacecraft for mining asteroids. Then Starlink started, and next up will be energy-intensive but high-latency distributed compute, which suits AI training well. A lot of the "exactly how" might still need to be figured out along the way, but it likely will get figured out.
2. You're assuming a space-based data center would look the same as an Earth-based data center. It definitely won't. It probably looks more like a larger scale Starlink, but with much bigger satellites due to the need for giant radiators.
3. You're assuming that different technologies (space DCs vs AVs) will progress in lock step with each other. Definitely not the case. For example, we can get wireless internet from space already, but we still don't have a robot that can give someone a haircut? The tech tree branches are mostly separate, and some explored a lot more than others.
4. Insane complexity is already something that many types of technology require. It does not preclude those things from being explored.
The ISS is getting old, I understand the idea is that companies provide the facilities and NASA rents them.
Something akin to the fervour of commercial launches.