what’s the best alternative?

You’re asking for suggestions for an automatic document categorization tool that doesn’t use any automatic document categorization?

It reads as especially hysterical in this context, because Paperless is an automatic document categorization system, and I’m really sure what they think the automatic part of that is if it’s not “AI” of some broad description. Paperless, Papermerge et al are basically wrappers for machine learning tools and have been for as long as they’ve existed. LLMs are a natural and obvious fit for the kind of work these applications exist to do.

This just feels like someone reading “Improved AI pathfinding” in the patch notes for a video game and screaming “OH MY GOD IS NOWHERE SAFE?!”

This article is seriously underselling the problem.

Yes, all of this is accurate, and its good data for people fighting back against data centres. They produce shockingly few jobs, and the most highly paid of those will likely be experts moved in from elsewhere.

But there’s a far bigger problem; AI data centres have no path to profitability. The cost of GPUs is so astronomically high and the depreciation so insanely fast that even if 3,000 - 4,000 data centres worth of AI compute demand materializes (it won’t; companies like Meta are already selling their own unused compute because demand is so weak), they still won’t be profitable, ever.

The article talks about how the permanent employment offered - on paper - is in the tens to low hundreds and that’s true, but the real employment is mostly going to be zero. In five years time 99% of these projects will be abandoned before completion, or turned into skate parks.