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Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

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Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#451

The moon program was $318 billion in 2023 dollars, this one is $500 billion. So that's why the tech barons who were present at the inauguration were high as a kite yesterday, they just got the financing for a real moon shot!

To be fair, it’s not easy to monetize the moon program into profitability. This has a far better shot of sustaining profitability.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#452

Where are they getting the $500B? Softbank's market cap is 84b and their entire vision fund is only $100b, Oracle only has $11b cash on hand, OpenAI's only raised $17b total...

MGX has at least $100bn: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/a-100-billion-middle... This is Abu Dhabi money.

This would be a large outlay even for UAE, who would be giving it to a direct competitor in the space: UAE is one of the few countries outside of the US who are in any way serious about AI.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#453

~$125B per year would be 2-3% of all domestic investment. It's similar in scale to the GDP of a small middle income country. If the electric grid — particularly the interconnection queue — is already the bottleneck to data center deployment, is something on this scale even close to possible? If it's a rationalized policy framework (big if!), I would guess there's some major permitting reform announcement coming soon.

Maybe they will invest in nuclear reactors. Data center, AI and nuclear power stations. Three advanced technologies, that's pretty good.

They are trying. Microsoft wants to star the 3 Mile Island reactor. And other companies have been signing contracts for small modular reactors. SMRs are a perfect fit for modern data centers IF they can be made cheaply enough.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#454

Where are they getting the $500B? Softbank's market cap is 84b and their entire vision fund is only $100b, Oracle only has $11b cash on hand, OpenAI's only raised $17b total...

Psst: it’s probably going to end up being a fraction of that but doesn’t make for as good a headline

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#455

I hear this joked about sometimes or used as a metaphor, but in the literal sense of the phrase, are we in a cold war right now? These types of dollars feel "defense-y", if that makes sense. Especially with the big focus on energy, whatever that ends up meaning. Defense as a motivation can get a lot done very fast so it will be interesting to watch, though it raises the hair on my arms

Absolutely for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_telecommuni...

I can only assume the US is hacking China at least as much as they hack us.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#456

I'm confused and a bit disturbed; honestly having a very difficult time internalizing and processing this information. This announcement is making me wonder if I'm poorly calibrated on the current progress of AI development and the potential path forward. Is the key idea here that current AI development has figured out enough to brute force a path towards AGI? Or I guess the alternative is that they expect to figure…

Let me avoid the use of the word AGI here because the term is a little too loaded for me these days. 1) reasoning capabilities in latest models are rapidly approaching superhuman levels and continue to scale with compute. 2) intelligence at a certain level is easier to achieve algorithmically when the hardware improves. There's also a larger path to intelligence and often simpler mechanisms 3) most current generation…

> All of this points to compute now being basically the only bottleneck to massively superhuman AIs

This is true for brute force algorithms as well and has been known for decades. With infinite compute, you can achieve wonders. But the problem lies in diminishing returns[1][2], and it seems things do not scale linearly, at least for transformers.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-19/anthropic...

2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/openai-go...

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_telecommuni...

Right, but they've been doing that for a while, to everyone. The US is much quieter about it, right? But you can twist this move and see how the gov would not want to display that level of investment within itself as it could be interpreted as a sign of aggression. but it makes sense to me that they'd have no issue working through corporations to achieve the same ends but now able to deny direct involvement

I don't think this administration is worried too much about showing aggression. If anything they are embracing it. Today was the first full day, and they have already threatened the sovereignty of at least four nations.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#459

I'm confused and a bit disturbed; honestly having a very difficult time internalizing and processing this information. This announcement is making me wonder if I'm poorly calibrated on the current progress of AI development and the potential path forward. Is the key idea here that current AI development has figured out enough to brute force a path towards AGI? Or I guess the alternative is that they expect to figure…

> Is the key idea here that current AI development has figured out enough to brute force a path towards AGI? Or I guess the alternative is that they expect to figure it out in the next 4 years...

Can't answer that question, but, if the only thing to change in the next four years was that generation got cheaper and cheaper, we haven't even begun to understand the transformative power of what we have available today. I think we've felt like 5-10% of the effects that integrating today's technology can bring, especially if generation costs come down to maybe 1% of what they currently are, and latency of the big models becomes close to instantaneous.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#460

The moon program was $318 billion in 2023 dollars, this one is $500 billion. So that's why the tech barons who were present at the inauguration were high as a kite yesterday, they just got the financing for a real moon shot!

To be fair, it’s not easy to monetize the moon program into profitability. This has a far better shot of sustaining profitability.

why do they need profitability? they already made $500B
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