alt Hacker NewsThis is so much money with which we could actually solve problems in the world. maybe even stop wars which break out because of scarcity issues.
maybe i am getting to old or to friendly to humans, but it's staggering to me how the priorities are for such things.
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I am surprised at the negativity from HN. Their clear goal is to build superintelligence. Listen to any of the interviews with Altman, Demis Hassabis, or Dario Amodei (Anthropic) on the purpose of this. They discuss the roadmaps to unlimited energy, curing disease, farming innovations to feed billions, permanent solutions to climate change, and more.
Does no one on HN believe in this anymore? Isn't this tech startup community meant to be the tip of the spear? We'll find out by 2030 either way.
>wars which break out because of scarcity issues
That doesn't seem to be much of a thing these days. If you look at Russia/Ukraine or China/Taiwan there's not much scarcity. It's more bullying dictator wants to control the neighbours issues.
Very zero-sum outlook on things which is factually untrue much of the time. When you invest money in something productive that value doesn't get automatically destroyed. The size of the pie isn't fixed.
It's an indirect attempt of tackling any first order problem. So is all software engineering.
Money doesn't fix stuff. You need good will people and good will people don't need that much money.
Such mega investments are usually not for the sake of humankind. They are usually for the sake of a very selected group of humans.
We could do 20 Manhattan projects with it[1].
1) Build fully autonomous cars so there are zero deaths from car accidents. This is ~45K deaths/year (just US!) and millions of injuries. Annual economic cost of crashes is $340 billion. Worldwide the toll is 10 - 100x?
2) Put solar on top of all highways.
3) Give money to all farmers to put solar.
4) Build transmission.
And many more ...
The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $27 billion in 2023): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
Five-hundred billion dollars is nothing when you consider there's a new government agency that it is said will shave two trillion from government inefficiency.
"actually solve problems in the world."
By "solve problems" you mean "temporarily mitigate problems by throwing money at them", right? Or do you actually have specific examples of problems that can be permanently solved and aren't already being tackled?
That’s like complaining about investments in automated looms at the start of the Industrial Revolution and claiming that the money would be better spent if handed out to the slum dwelling population.
We have the benefit of hindsight now and we understand that technological revolutions improve living standards for everyone and drag whole populations out of grinding labour and poverty.
And it would be foolish to allow China and Russia to out-invest the West in AI and make us mere clients (or worse, victims) of their superior technology.
Industrialists understand that the way to fix the world’s problems is to advance society, as opposed to resting on the laurels of past advancement, and dividing the diminishing spoils of those achievements.
> maybe even stop wars which break out because of scarcity issues.
Like which wars in this century?
The wars are how American tax payer money gets given to all these companies. Why would they try to end them?
I disagree with you. I think the impact of AI on society in the long term is going to be massive, and such investments are necessary. If we look at the past century, technology has had (in my opinion) and incredibly positive impact on society. You have to invest in the future.
Russia did not have a scarcity issue and still invaded its neighbor.
Won't an intelligent agent available to everyone be able to solve problems in the world? Isn't that why they (OpenAI) and others are doing what they do? To bring abundance?
We flew to the moon several times for half that money xD
We already tried fixing problems with throwing tax money at them. It didn't work out. You can see the result of socialism in Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and where not. Wars do not start because of scarcities. Wars start because of disbalance of power. And it is very important for the Western world to be ahead in the AI, because otherwise China may cause a real war and then a lot of Western people would die. Do you not care about them?
cant bribe an exponential curve for peace through linear surplus redistribution .
I'm sorry but unless this $500B was being invested in equipping soldiers and building navies, air capabilities, artillery, etc it could not stop even an urban gang turf war.
But then how could politicians and the wealthy steal all that money if you just gave it away or helped the poors?
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It actually isn't alot, about $100 spread out over a few years for every person on earth isnt enough to do these things..
The US can't stop the wars it wants others to fight for them even if it means population collapse like in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
For less than this same price tag, we could’ve eliminated student loan debt for ~20 million Americans. It would in turn open a myriad number of opportunities, like owning a home and/or feeling more comfortable starting a family. It would stimulate the economy in predictable ways.
Instead we gave a small number of people all of this money for a moonshot in a state where they squabble over who’s allowed to use which bathroom and if I need an abortion I might die.