[HN Gopher] Sam Altman seeking trillions for AI chip fabrication...
___________________________________________________________________
Sam Altman seeking trillions for AI chip fabrication from UAE,
others
Author : whiteboardr
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-02-09 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| mrandish wrote:
| $5 to $7 Trillion? Developing cutting edge chip fabrication
| technologies is insanely expensive but that number still strikes
| me as far too high. Unfortunately, the article doesn't go into
| any detail on the allocation of funds for a capital raise that
| unprecedentedly massive. I don't doubt that Altman may have cited
| that range, my skepticism is more centered on the practical
| possibility of productively putting that much money to work in a
| relevant startup time frame (~five years). Maybe there's missing
| relevant detail, like perhaps he was referencing a cumulative
| total spend over a decade or longer.
|
| Just for comparison TSMC's market cap is ~$500B, ASML (who makes
| the cutting edge fab machines) is ~$350B. NVidia itself is ~$1.7T
| but that also includes non-AI things. Even if you include buying
| smaller players in addition to those, you could theoretically
| outright own the entire relevant market for less than $3T. And
| that's at full de-risked, retail public market price in a very
| frothy time period. The new venture cost should be less,
| otherwise investors would be wiser to just buy the existing
| players with all their IP, proven know-how and market momentum.
| riversflow wrote:
| I mean I think the sales pitch in this case is literally, "Burn
| an enormous pile of (oil) money, to gain a large but smaller
| pile of (chip) money"
| sofixa wrote:
| > "Burn an enormous pile of (oil) money, to gain a large but
| smaller pile of (chip) money"
|
| But continue having that pile of (chip) money after the oil
| and gas money runs out (either due to decarbonisation or due
| literally the resources running out).
| consumer451 wrote:
| Let's assume it works. So then ultra-religious authoritarians
| own part of AGI.
|
| Sounds great!?
| jacooper wrote:
| It really doesn't change much.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Please explain. People are upset about "woke" ChatGPT,
| because they have the comfort of that first-world
| problem.
|
| Thing is, it can actually get much worse than optimizing
| for inclusion. Do we really want Sharia authoritarian
| AGI?
|
| Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying with your
| terse reply?
| anon373839 wrote:
| Not to mention, you can't just throw a large pile of money
| somewhere and create another ASML. It took them decades to get
| EUV working, as that tech is insanely sensitive and complex.
| cedws wrote:
| This seems like a smart move. OpenAI needs to run models more
| cheaply for profitability. He wants to start a hardware venture
| in parallel with the goal of selling better hardware to OpenAI.
| If it fails, it's not his money that was lost. If it succeeds, he
| has two successful ventures on his hands.
|
| Anybody know what happened to George Hotz' hardware company? Or
| did he give up on it after 2 weeks like his Twitter frontend job?
| neom wrote:
| Yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563
| morpheos137 wrote:
| I don't know why HN loves Sam Altman so much. Has he ever written
| a significant piece of software or invented anything? Has he ever
| built a significant, profitable business from the ground up? The
| guy was a fundraiser superstar when money was easy to get in the
| 2010s but I have yet to see technical or business competence
| sufficient to grant him the level of respect many in this
| community seem to grant him.
|
| There are people who are technically competent or genuinely
| intelligent who can also raise funds.
|
| The guy reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes or Eliezer Yudkowski of
| "lesswrong."
|
| A sophomoric guy with minimal technical or business
| accomplishments who is just smart enough to tell rich people what
| they wanna hear to fuel his game.
|
| There is an old term for this personality type. Snake oil
| salesman aka con artist.
|
| See https://blog.piekniewski.info/
|
| For a sane take on AI by someone who actually got an education
| and is an expert in his field.
| sweeter wrote:
| He's the new Elon Musk that people can idolize. I really don't
| understand the obsession with corporate venture capitalist
| vultures and trust fund babies. He's a glorified hype man. He
| curates a positive public image and makes dubious claims about
| the abilities of <insert new tech here> to drum up funding.
|
| There is a large subset of tech oriented people who are
| extremely susceptible to sensationalism and treat these people
| like cult leaders to aspire to. Its just odd.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| It's the way people are wired. They need a hero to look to.
| Now usually the outcome is better in the end when the hero is
| genuine not a mimic. I think "show, don't tell," is a good
| rule of thumb for judging character. It's even in the Bible
| as a parable of Jesus something like judge a vine by its
| fruit.
|
| In the early 21st century it seems judgements of business
| acumen have become untethered from actually making money by
| building a real product that is in demand by the market. At a
| certain point the game of shuffling money around as a shell
| game will become unsustainable. That's already evidenced in
| the high inflation rate we have.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563
| maxglute wrote:
| I can't tell if this is delusion or borderline delusional
| highballing negotiation technique.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-09 23:01 UTC)