A 7 trillion dollar experiment!

Sam Altman was ousted a few days back from OpenAI but he was then brought back. After all that drama, now the news is that Sam is looking for a 7 trillion dollar investment from the UAE.

The entire USA’s GDP is 27 trillion USD. Sam alone wants 7 trillion USD now!

But why?

This is enough cash “to gobble up Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, ASML, Samsung, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and every other chipmaker, designer, intellectual property holder, and equipment vendor of consequence in their entirety”, and have some more.

To do what?

Because Sam wants to make things, specifically the GPUs (graphics processing units) that machine-learning (AI) systems require.

Noble aim — So, what is the problem?

The problem is that all this magic needs unconscionable quantities of data and computational power, unlimited water (which we are severely short of) to cool the data centers, and skilled labor (which takes years to build).

The 7 trillion dollar question still remains if such an investment will save the world or if it is just to feed one man’s giant ego and ambition!