alt Hacker News> These debts mean nothing if the US government actually views AI technology as being on par with the Manhattan project. They'll just bail them out or nationalise them.
According to Wikipedia, the Manhattan project only cost $28 billion in 2024 dollars. That's a completely different order of magnitude compared to what we're talking about here. I imagine the size of the investment here would even be hard for the US government to swallow.
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I just made a similar comment further down the chain here, but I frankly think the dollars and cents economics around AI is a moot point. Like the pentagon, they'll just pull money out of thin air, or from other departments, or just write things off like it never existed.
I don't actually think the current administration, or the people behind it, actually care about real world economics anymore.
Or, whole program development and per unit costs included, about the equivalent of 14 units of B-2 bombers in 2024 dollars.
What percentage of the budget was it? I think that's also needed for a meaningful comparison. I've heard about the war taxes being high, but I don't know anything about the economy of the time otherwise.