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https://freedium.cfd/https://albertoromgar.medium.com/you-have-no-idea-how-screwed-openai-is-9481fe33f1db>
"One of the recurrent ideas I've been hearing lately is that everything OpenAI
is doing — from total product diversification beyond chatbots, into browsers,
devices, chips, social media, etc., to immense deals across the board with
Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, Amazon, etc., to the promises of AGI,
superintelligence and the singularity, to the big contracts with the DoD, to
the reported $500 billion valuation, to the possible IPO at $1 trillion
valuation (around 2026–2027) after restructuring itself into a for-profit
company — is with the sole objective of becoming
too big to fail. (That's the
title of a
Wall Street Journal article that was widely shared earlier this
month.)
From this view, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman would be intertwining his influence,
like a master weaver, across the economic layers — from consumer to enterprise
to government — and transversally throughout culture and politics, so that,
even in the scenario of an industrial bubble (AI works but there's too much
money on it) or insufficient returns from datacenter CapEx (AI works but
doesn't provide enough productivity gains), his empire is bailed out.
Economist Tyler Cowen wrote a countercurrent positive take for
The Free
Press. He argues that it's good that the AI industry exists as an engine for
the languid American economic machine, even if it's the last remaining of its
kind, and so it "makes perfect sense" for Wall Street to be obsessed with it.
If Nvidia's $5 trillion market cap is comparable to the GDP of Germany and
Japan (I know the metrics are not apples-to-apples, who cares) or if OpenAI's
revenue is far from compensating for the losses (Microsoft's last earnings
report revealed OpenAI incurred a $12 billion loss just the last quarter),
that's not necessarily the sign of a bubble or the symptom of a recession,
Cowen says, but a reminder that America specializes in turning the worst of
times into the best of times.
Noah Smith — also an economist and a techno-optimist — has not been as positive
lately, publishing what might very well be his most depressing piece in the
last years: the world war two after-party is over. I sympathize with both
Cowen's and Smith's views. On the one hand, it's good to believe that AI could
be the answer to the half-century-long decline of Western civilization. On the
other hand, it's
hard to believe it.
So it's pretty clear what conclusion we should take away from this, right?
Economists are correct in re-stating, time and again, that their discipline is
not an exact science."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
