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.

  • @[email protected]
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    9 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      209 months ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        9 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        59 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.

            • @[email protected]
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              39 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          29 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.