this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with investors, including from the United Arab Emirates, to raise between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in funding. The goal, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, is to increase the world's chip manufacturing capacity and enhance AI capabilities.

The fundraising efforts are part of a broader strategy to address OpenAI's growth constraints, particularly the scarcity of AI chips needed for training large language models like ChatGPT.

Altman's proposal is said to include forming a partnership with investors, chip manufacturers, and power providers to finance the construction of chip foundries, which would then be operated by the chip manufacturers.

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For perspective, global annual GDP is $105 trillion, which means Altman is asking the world to invest 6.7% or so of the entire world's economic output for one year in his company.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Holy fucking bonkers when you put it that way. Like holy fuck.

Are they that close to something amazing, or is Altman going true Dr Evil megalomaniac?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's both. Basically, if he's right that this is among the most important tech in world history and deserves $7 trillion in research, it'll make OpenAI the du jour monopolist over said most important tech in world history if he gets it. Outright dystopian.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Generative AI is not an important development. General AI would be. This is just a party trick.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, AI's been a whole field for many decades, machine learning and deep learning is a whole field that existed and was doing tons of interesting work across a variety of domains before transformers came out. Fully agreed that LLM's are a party trick, but companies use party tricks to gin up interest and money for their real work all the time. None of this changes the fact that AI is important technology.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's also open source too. With faster chips and standard training sets, it will be trivial for anyone to train a basic AI to recognize fire hydrants or whatever. Just like with computers, the "revolution" will not be one giant company but every business using their own.

Your fridge only needs to recognize food items. It doesn't need any more intelligent software. I want a food recognition AI and cameras in the fridge and cabinets so I know what food I need to buy. This doesn't even need live cameras (for power consumption, privacy, and storage). It can just take a picture and analyze it when the door opens, then delete the picture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry what's all open source?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Llms. There are very competitive, fully open source models.

Openai is not.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're as close as theranos was, just need the money and "two more years".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

theranos never changed the world, openai already has

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, not really in a positive way yet. I use it for quick code snippets but it’s not all that important compared to the fact that misuse of generative A.I. is making so much information on the Internet completely worthless. I don’t think the trade-offs have been worth anything we’ve seen yet.

I’m bullish about a lot of generative A.I. use cases long term but they haven’t accomplished much positive yet and there’s still major, major scaling issues that may not be solved soon. It could easily be like self driving cars where progress stagnates. A lot of times with software, the first 80% is easy and the last 20% takes a decade longer than people expect.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That change has mostly br a bunch of empty promises. There is no AI yet, there is machine learning, which is just an ingredient. As impressive as they are, they're mostly useless

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Machine learning is AI

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know if creating and tying yourself to a bubble that's inevitably going to burst is exactly a great way to change the world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's a great way to make a fat pile of cash though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ye and he wants it for a fucking chatbot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They are that close to cocaine.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

And the world's 5 biggest companies their total market cap is a bit over 8 trillion dollars, which is also mind boggling, that so much capital is concentrated in the hands of so few people or shall we say mega corporations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Came here to say this. Does she know how much money there is in the world? He is asking for basically 1/20th of all the money in the world. Even if that was possible it would be dangerous for one company to hold that much.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Money can be created by banks via loans, you can just make it up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But then you end up with inflation. So in the process of creating money you've reduced the value of the money. And banks working in cooperation with government create money. Private companies outside of the banking system can't create their own money anymore. If any sizable portion of this is taken out as a loan. It creates a systemic risk for the world economy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Banks most certainly make up money today via loans. This happens all the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But this isn't a bank. And making money doesn't come without consequences. You're not thinking about second and third order effects. This would basically be quantitative easing on a grand scale but for just one company. It would literally destroy the economy if the investment failed. And they aren't the only player in the industry. The level of systemic risk is too large. And if it didn't fail, it would basically be handing the world economy over to one player.