Trump to meet AI leaders to discuss US investment in their companies

Trump to meet AI leaders to discuss US investment in their companies(bbc.com)

8 points by artninja1988 27 days ago | 12 comments

If the legal authority for these investments isn’t clear, it could be a bonanza for the AI companies. They get capital and are then able to return it. Essentially, an interest-free loan.

artninja1988 27 days ago | |

As far as I understand, these companies would cede shares to the government, i.e. give the USG a stake for free.

JumpCrisscross 27 days ago | | |

> these companies would cede shares to the government, i.e. give the USG a steak for free

That’s not the precedent of the Intel investment, where the “government’s equity stake” was “funded by the remaining $5.7 billion in grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act and $3.2 billion awarded to the company as part of the Secure Enclave program” [1]

[1] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1748/...

morpheos137 27 days ago |

this would.be a long term disaster for the us economy. you would have an unproductive or deflationay technology subsidized by the federal goverment. if ai raises productivity then it will be deflationary (making nominal gdp shrink). if ai does not raise productivity then you have a misallocation of capital backed by the federal government. instead the us should invest in things that actually would grow the economy, like cheap energy for one and basic r & d for two. An economy based on regurgitation of what has already been written is not competitive with economies that actually make things and make new ideas that are practically useful. name one technology invented by an LLM so far?

andsoitis 27 days ago | |

> instead the us should invest in things thst actually would grow the economy, like cheap energy for one and basic r & d for two.

Aren’t the big AI labs doing both those things?

morpheos137 27 days ago | | |

Is this a joke? Again what technology has an llm autonomously developed?

techblueberry 27 days ago |

I hate this for all the reasons, but given how much Americans hate their government is the government taking a steak in AI likely to improve people’s opinion of AI?

JumpCrisscross 27 days ago | |

> is the government taking a steak in AI likely to improve people’s opinion of AI?

Is this a claimed aim of the effort?

morpheos137 27 days ago | | |

Seems to me that state sponsorship of ai platforms would violate separation of church and state given looney transhumanist ai fanfic is entirely unsupported by empiricism or mathematics. Again can anybody name an economcially useful technology an LLM invented? Maybe we can't because it is like asking for what a search engine invented. Adaptive general intelligence does not exist today and is provably unattainable by fixed weight tranformers interpolating over the human corpus. however rent seeking with their unproductive but persuasive technology is a great temporary survival strategy for OpenAI et al given they can't justify themselves in a competitive marketplace at the cost of us all. imagine if in 2000 the federal gov back-stopped pets.com because ecommerce was deemed in the national interest. lol.

If I were China or Russia I would want the US to invest deeply in the AI boondogle meanwhile I make or mine the things that actually matter in the world. Its like the US vs USSR defense spending war in reverse. if rivals can dupe the US into wasting money on useless "ai" while they build cheap energy or make physical products.

techblueberry 27 days ago | | |

According to the article(stake though, not steak)

artninja1988 27 days ago | |

Can you name the reasons you hate it for? Genuine question

techblueberry 26 days ago | | |

Specifically I think the risk profile these companies have decided to take on is such that the government is basically investing to mitigate bad decision making. These are basically most of the biggest companies in the US right now. Also, I think Trump has shown that the primary criteria for this is not merit but graft.

If these companies were in an earlier more precarious part of their research cycle, and if like multiple of his advisors and his VP weren’t industry insiders or paid by such I might be more in favor. But this is basically regulatory capture in steroids.

The economy is centralized in the magnificent ten enough.