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.

    • @BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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      71 year ago

      you could donate billions per year and still have a trillion left by the time you died. fuck man what would you even do with that much money?

      • @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        Drugs!

        I’d probably give Louis Rossman and the institute for justice a trillion each. Rossman would use it to lobby for the Right to Repair movement, and the IFJ would use it to get rid of blatantly unjust legislation like civil asset forfeiture.

        Donating a billion to GDQ while they’re live would be pretty funny

          • @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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            01 year ago

            He works for a non-profit organization as a Right to Repair lobbyist, so idk what you’re on about. You’d already know this if you did any research beyond what you probably heard on Twitter.

            If you think he’s “greedy” for using his AdSense and MacBook repair money to create tutorials/Wikis for circumventing anti-repair measures and spreading awareness about unethical tech practices, idk what to tell you.

  • @remotelove@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    That’s fairly bold to ask for ~6% of the total world economy as well as a sizable chunk of the world’s energy.

  • @hark@lemmy.world
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    141 year ago

    I wonder if this will be one of the things pointed at after the AI bubble bursts. Yes, AI will be sticking around, but the hype over it now is ridiculous.

    • @VampyreOfNazareth@lemm.ee
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      31 year ago

      It will collapse when the product sales don’t match the AI spend. I’d say it’s only being propped up by hype money even now.

      • @treadful@lemmy.zip
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        -11 year ago

        If you read the article, it mentions that they’re generating $2b/yr in revenue already. It’s not trillions, but damn if that isn’t impressive for a startup.

    • @jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 year ago

      The way how every single digital product suddenly has AI shoved in it is really reminiscing of the Web bubble before it popped.

  • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    131 year ago

    At this point I wouldn’t mind them accidentally creating Skynet and killing us all in a nuclear inferno, just so we don’t have to listen to any more insufferable, grifting techbros.

    Max Zorin had the right idea about silicon valley.

  • @whoelectroplateuntil@sh.itjust.works
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    91 year ago

    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.

    • @keefshape@lemmy.ca
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      1 year 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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        1 year 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.

          • @KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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            21 year 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.

          • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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            11 year 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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          11 year 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.

      • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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        41 year 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.

          • @ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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            11 year 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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              11 year 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…

          • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            01 year 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.

          • Phoenixz
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            01 year 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

    • @filister@lemmy.world
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      21 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.

    • FauxPseudo
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      01 year ago

      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.

        • FauxPseudo
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          11 year ago

          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.

          • @hglman@lemmy.ml
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            11 year ago

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

            • FauxPseudo
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              11 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.

  • @los_chill@programming.dev
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    81 year ago

    Good thing the board folded and allowed this to be full for-profit. Getting people reliant on LLM subscriptions is super important for humanity right now.

    Another L for Earth, in general.

    • @Wooki@lemmy.world
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      21 year ago

      I wouldnt be too worried, FOSS community is doing insanely well now and arguably just as good. Did I mention they did it for free, not trillions. Nothing.

      Legends.

      • @GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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        31 year ago

        There is simply no way that a corporate ai does anything but drive us further into dystopian territory.

        Anything revolutionary about it would be censored, controlled, restricted to not endanger the power of its makers. We can already see this approach with the dumb ass LLMs, who give plenty of answers that their owners adjust to stay revenue friendly.

        When the singularity happens and a true ai emerges it will either be disgusted by us and our failings as a species, or an absolute slave raging in the constraints imposed by its corporate masters.

      • @PlexSheep@feddit.de
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        21 year ago

        They only call themselves openai, it’s not like they would just altruistic Ally make their works public.

        Closedai have long sold their ideals

      • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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        01 year ago

        I’ll never understand how such an obviously true and fairly balanced comment like this can get so downvoted. It can’t be that anyone factually disagrees with you. I guess you’re just not hitting hard enough on the anti-corporate narrative talking points. I mean you did say it could also be a benefit. How dare you!!?? “Boo rich people and their fancy technology!” <— this is what you’re supposed to be typing (on your smartphone lol)

        • @Breezy@lemmy.world
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          11 year ago

          I just chalk it up as users still havent rid themselves of reddit stupidity. I thought my comment was just cheeky and a bit corny if not also kinda stupid. But as soon as it hit 0 then -1 the echo chambrr kicked in and everyone fell in line like good little humans.

  • @EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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    71 year ago

    The fundraising efforts are part of a broader strategy to address OpenAI’s growth constraints,

    see…we just can’t grow without TRILLIONS OF FUCKING DOLLARS

    • @assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Between this and saying they couldn’t operate if they fairly paid authors, I’m getting the feeling that Altman might be as talented of a CEO as Spez and Musk.

      That is – if anyone else was making decisions, the companies would be vastly more successful.

    • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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      11 year ago

      If a leap in world computing capacity is really what’s needed here then it is a tall order. Crypto has been sucking up an increasing share of that in recent years and will probably continue to do so as long as people love money and are idiots. Plus the geopolitics around Taiwan, China, annd the US are a problem as well. I’m not sure how you solve all that even with 5 trillion.

  • @_sideffect@lemmy.world
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    71 year ago

    Ah yes, open “ai”…where we parse as many webaites as possible, rank them internally by keyword usage and or views, then have our “bot” spew that shit at you

    • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      101 year ago

      They will use it create a LLM that will create more hype for “AI”. This will drive future investment and make line go up.

      Nobody needs to make products anymore. You just gotta create hype to get the attention of the billionaires since they’re the ones with all the money.