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.

  • keefshape@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    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?

    • whoelectroplateuntil@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

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

        • whoelectroplateuntil@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months 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.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            They’re bullshit. Any breakthrough in General AI world be news everywhere forever.

              • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Aside from the fact that OpenAI and Microsoft leak like a sieve, the scramble for investors would publicize the development, and also the fact that Altman is a braggadocious idiot who need everyone to think he’s smart or he’ll collapse in on himself. The world would know, there isn’t an argument to the contrary that holds any water given the scale of the breakthrough general AI would be and the actors involved here.

          • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            The breakthrough was the ability to do like 3rd grade math. Being able to reason is a big step to researchers but it’s still very much in the research phase.

        • scarabic@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Generative AI pales in importance compared to General AI but it is still an important development on its own.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Read the last paragraph of the OP at least. This is not asking for $5 trillion to be handed solely to OpenAI to go become a world monopoly on chip manufacture. What he’s really asking is for investors to direct funds to radically increasing world compute capacity, to the profit for the chip manufacturers and likely many others. OpenAI just gets to continue the track it’s on without this constraint. There is nothing here about them monopolistically controlling this entire investment and in fact the opposite is true: it’s framed as a broad partnership venture.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They’re as close as theranos was, just need the money and “two more years”.

        • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • scarabic@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            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.

            To be fair we have scare articles galore every day about how this is all ruining the world and killing artists, because fear sells. Meanwhile millions of people like you and me are quietly using this tool to improve our work.

            When we compare the relative weight of the two, let’s take the media scare avalanche out of it and just use our personal experiences to judge. I am currently being measurably helped by genAI, and not measurably hurt by it. I just read articles daily about how I’m going to be killed in my sleep by in any second now…

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          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

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          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.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It may not be bonkers at all though. If we look at it as taking money and food out of people’s mouths for a year then yes it’s a lot. But how much free investment capital is there in the world at any given time? Wealth has been accumulating and accumulating in rich people’s investment portfolios for ever and ever. How many Trillions get allocated in any given year? All Altman is saying is that he wants 5 of those to be allocated here and not somewhere else. It’s not necessarily taking rice out of any children’s mouths.