All he wants is to find ways to keep propping up the unsustainable and insatiable beast he’s bullied into existence. The promise of AGI is one-half threat and one-half desperate hope, because there’s no other way to keep the bubble growing without government resources.
Ironically, much of the observed behaviour is instrumentally convergent for most of the suggested ultimate goals.
Trying to make a safe and aligned AGI or a statutory government monopoly would both get about half the things we've seen.
The other half is stuff which is collectively mutually exclusive on all goals, but humans aren't perfect logical spheres in a vacuum, so it could still be basically any of them.
yeah the whole fixation on "superintellegence" really feels like the a modern telling of Tower of Babel. Except this time we won't end up with a lot of different languages or whatever.
at this point, the lofty goals are a distraction from celebrating the utility of what we have, incremental upgrades, and reduced resource usage.
> Mr. Altman has since scaled his ambition down to hundreds of billions of dollars, the nine people said, and hatched a new strategy: Court U.S. government officials by first helping to build data centers in the United States.
When all else fails, pitch your idea to the right officials in the USG and you'll make bank. And if you do it right, you won't even be doing anything at all. There are companies getting 8-10 figures a year to fail at upgrading systems from DOS to literally anything not DOS. It's a very low bar, but a profitable one if you can pull it off.
The NSA Utah data center cost $1.5B-$2B to build and then another ~$2B of electronics to stock inside it.
It also had hundreds of contractors and employs 200+ full time employees. It consumes $40M worth of electricity each year and uses 1.7 million gallons of water each day for cooling.
So it sure doesn't seem like it unless we want to get into a debate around how much perceived useful data and value the NSA gets out of spying on Americans and foreign countries.
>There are companies getting 8-10 figures a year to fail
I read some article about how the federal retirement system is about up to $500m over the last 20 years on a failed outsourcing the digitization of their paper system. They are apparently not much closer to having a digital version than they were when they started something like 3-4 contractors ago. Specifically the storage hub in West Virginia.
There has to be some sort of grift in that kinda waste. How do that many companies not move the needle and get to keep the money?
In Canada, there was a lot of controversy over the government awarding ~$200M in contracts to one consultancy, almost always without competitive bidding. They chronically underdelivered, e.g.:
There has been much scrutiny over how much the ArriveCAN app cost to develop and who was subcontracted for its development. Contracts show that the federal government will spend close to $54 million with 23 separate subcontractors. A Parliamentary committee ordered federal departments to submit contracting documents related to the app but have been told that the names of subcontractors cannot be released citing issues of confidentiality. In October 2022, two developers at two separate IT companies took part in a hackathon where they both developed duplicates of the ArriveCAN app in under two days, for an estimated cost of $250,000.
Surely the actual app was more complicated than the hackathon duplicates. But where in between $250k and $54m should the cost have been? To be fair, I read estimates saying Healthcare.gov cost around $500m, and a friend who I know is a great engineer worked on that (albeit in a rescue capacity). And a single F-35 costs $80m, so maybe we need to triage things.
There are a lot of problems. A key one I saw repeatedly:
No one in program offices (the offices responsible for these system developments) has the proper expertise to judge IT/software contracts or the IT/software portion of contracts. And, they won't listen to you because they've got a contractor or two sitting on their shoulder whispering into their ear things that are very wrong (this got a Colonel I worked with in trouble once) and leads to very biased decision making, away from reality and in favor of the grifters.
This is a reliable thing. There are some really good people in gov't, but they don't seem to make their way to the program offices. So without expertise and good judgement, you get these 8-10 figure (or maybe worse) boondoggles.
> The OpenAI chief told White House officials that A.I. data centers would be a catalyst for the re-industrialization of America, creating as many as half a million jobs
Would love to hear OpenAI's explanation behind this line of thinking.
Yes, according to Vox Microsoft is leasing all the energy from the Three Mile nuclear power plant and planning to construct more to power their AI training. People pointed out how much energy Bitcoin was (and still is) wasting, AI looks like it's going to dwarf that amount of energy use for an equally questionable product.
They want huge tax credits for data centers that then won't employ many people or will employ visa'd migrants, but that can of worms can be kicked down the road to another administration.
> Would love to hear OpenAI's explanation behind this line of thinking.
My assumption is that the data centers would mostly be staffed by those who will have to manually audit data going in and out of the LLMs on a daily basis. There would also be a need to generate/curate the test data that the LLMs will have train on.
There is potential for half a million jobs, but is that what you would want to have human effort invested in, is the real question.
Energy, infrastructure, and the potential for new executive branches dedicated only to enforcing AI regulation would go pretty far. The government is pretty damn good at spending too much money and creating jobs, they often don't need much of a reason as long as it justifies spending more money and centralizing more power.
Patent medicine is how I like to think about it. Strong placebo effect, occasionally some health benefits, mostly nominal. Strong economic incentives and some harmful effects. Traveling salesmen who claim wonders, then leave town before the miracle is delivered.
Not working for you? Be the first to try the new elixir.
But after they plug in the GPUs and run the cables, Large Language Models will give everyone personal robot servants and jetpacks while allowing {your generous investment nation here} to conquer all the economies. /s
Sam's flailing. He's desperate for more money, because OAI is running out. And Sam will say anything and everything to get more money. He's making whatever noise makes the audience feel good, truth be damned.
And it's kind of funny to see how well MS has played that particular instrument. A partnership with Sam got them 49% ownership and got rid of the doomer faction. The 75% profit share makes any future investors look long and hard at investing into what looks to be a capital-intensive low-revenue business right now.
Which makes it likely that OAI will run out of money, and oops, let's see if there aren't suddenly more than 49% ownership. And MS has a technology where they were long behind. (My bet is that the majority ownership will happen this funding round, because Sam is desperate)
The only way that doesn't happen is if Sam manages a massive investment round and finds a path to profit before the money's burned up. And the beauty of it is that the early 49% ownership means they only need to make a comparatively tiny investment this round to still be a majority owner in the company, with a 75% revenue share until their money is fully recouped. And the other investors get to bear the majority of the risk for the much larger funding round.
This are all utterly logical plays if you are willing to accept Sam is somebody who can make things move, loves gambling, and is a narcissist.
I really do think he's being played by a virtuoso, and it gives me great joy to watch that unfold.
In a sense I kind of respect it but the way OpenAI are 100x-ing all their statements ("Universal basic compute"!) like every small startup has to pretend to be the next XYZ (only on a much bigger scale) is hilarious. Are they even in the lead at the moment?
Sam Altman will champion Direct Intelligence, while Elon Musk will take credit for Alternating Intelligence. Then, to prove how dangerous Alternating Intelligence really is, Sam will use it to execute dogs, fry elephants, and even immolate a few Teslas, before finally inventing the deadly Artificially Intelligent Chair to execute prisoners.
Readit News
Or he wants his suppliers to be a regulated utility while he sells 100% margin products on top of it?
Or he wants all the greater fools now wherever they are so he can get out before the collapse?
It feels like this is a case of following the money to understand the real goals, since it's unclear to me that AGI is that goal.
>Or he wants his suppliers to be a regulated utility while he sells 100% margin products on top of it?
Near term yep - soon as regulatory capture drops. They'll make out like bandits.
>Or he wants all the greater fools now wherever they are so he can get out before the collapse?
Then this, by the time competition catches up anyway because there are no real moats here besides regulation
>Wait, he wants his open product to be like a utility with low profits for maximized reach?
Then this is what remains, in a sea of other providers.
Financially? Pump and Dump, baby. Though I reckon the end result will still be intelligence flowing like water.
Ironically, much of the observed behaviour is instrumentally convergent for most of the suggested ultimate goals.
Trying to make a safe and aligned AGI or a statutory government monopoly would both get about half the things we've seen.
The other half is stuff which is collectively mutually exclusive on all goals, but humans aren't perfect logical spheres in a vacuum, so it could still be basically any of them.
at this point, the lofty goals are a distraction from celebrating the utility of what we have, incremental upgrades, and reduced resource usage.
Deleted Comment
When all else fails, pitch your idea to the right officials in the USG and you'll make bank. And if you do it right, you won't even be doing anything at all. There are companies getting 8-10 figures a year to fail at upgrading systems from DOS to literally anything not DOS. It's a very low bar, but a profitable one if you can pull it off.
It also had hundreds of contractors and employs 200+ full time employees. It consumes $40M worth of electricity each year and uses 1.7 million gallons of water each day for cooling.
So it sure doesn't seem like it unless we want to get into a debate around how much perceived useful data and value the NSA gets out of spying on Americans and foreign countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
I read some article about how the federal retirement system is about up to $500m over the last 20 years on a failed outsourcing the digitization of their paper system. They are apparently not much closer to having a digital version than they were when they started something like 3-4 contractors ago. Specifically the storage hub in West Virginia.
There has to be some sort of grift in that kinda waste. How do that many companies not move the needle and get to keep the money?
Deleted Comment
No one in program offices (the offices responsible for these system developments) has the proper expertise to judge IT/software contracts or the IT/software portion of contracts. And, they won't listen to you because they've got a contractor or two sitting on their shoulder whispering into their ear things that are very wrong (this got a Colonel I worked with in trouble once) and leads to very biased decision making, away from reality and in favor of the grifters.
This is a reliable thing. There are some really good people in gov't, but they don't seem to make their way to the program offices. So without expertise and good judgement, you get these 8-10 figure (or maybe worse) boondoggles.
Dead Comment
Would love to hear OpenAI's explanation behind this line of thinking.
Would have to be energy. Data centres have light human footprints. And Altman wants to fabricate the chips in the Middle East, not America [1].
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/openai-s-...
e: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/20/24249770/microsoft-three-...
only after they are already built
There will therefore be a sudden supply of half a million such factories.
Think the Matrix, only the futuristic artificial intelligence isn't harvesting human brainpower/heat -- instead most people work at power plants.
My assumption is that the data centers would mostly be staffed by those who will have to manually audit data going in and out of the LLMs on a daily basis. There would also be a need to generate/curate the test data that the LLMs will have train on. There is potential for half a million jobs, but is that what you would want to have human effort invested in, is the real question.
Not working for you? Be the first to try the new elixir.
What happens if giving to everyone and their mothers ends up in low usage? Are they going to blame scale again and ask for a Dyson Sphere?
And it's kind of funny to see how well MS has played that particular instrument. A partnership with Sam got them 49% ownership and got rid of the doomer faction. The 75% profit share makes any future investors look long and hard at investing into what looks to be a capital-intensive low-revenue business right now.
Which makes it likely that OAI will run out of money, and oops, let's see if there aren't suddenly more than 49% ownership. And MS has a technology where they were long behind. (My bet is that the majority ownership will happen this funding round, because Sam is desperate)
The only way that doesn't happen is if Sam manages a massive investment round and finds a path to profit before the money's burned up. And the beauty of it is that the early 49% ownership means they only need to make a comparatively tiny investment this round to still be a majority owner in the company, with a 75% revenue share until their money is fully recouped. And the other investors get to bear the majority of the risk for the much larger funding round.
This are all utterly logical plays if you are willing to accept Sam is somebody who can make things move, loves gambling, and is a narcissist.
I really do think he's being played by a virtuoso, and it gives me great joy to watch that unfold.