Tech Companies to Make Major Investments in Artificial Intelligence

What Happened?

President Trump announced yesterday that several technology companies plan to make a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence and supporting infrastructure in the near future.

According to Futurism, the new effort, named Stargate:

‘[Is] reportedly a joint venture between ChatGPT creator OpenAI, the Japanese investment group SoftBank, and the software behemoth Oracle, and will see the building of new datacenters — in short, massive, wildly energy-intensive computing facilities — in the US. The first of these facilities, according to the report, will be constructed somewhere in Texas.’

Why it Matters

A CBS report indicated that the companies involved plan to invest $100 billion initially then add another $400 billion over the next four years.

The investment would also come after President Trump reversed a Biden Administration executive order governing the use and development of artificial intelligence. This means tech companies now face a more deregulated environment for artificial intelligence.

The combination of fewer regulations and more investment could offer an opportunity for major advances and innovation in the field of artificial intelligence.

China and the United States are engaged in an arms-race style competition in artificial intelligence. Each country is vying to gain supremacy in that field. This new effort could help the United States gain an edge.

Because a major portion of the new investment for artificial intelligence infrastructure includes the construction of power plants to provide the energy for data centers. At least initially the new round of investments could generate thousands of new jobs for American workers.

The advancement of artificial intelligence could threaten some white collar jobs in the future by replacing human workers. There is the potential is there for some existing jobs to be replaced entirely.

Even jobs not wholly replaced could be impacted. The potential is also there for human workers and artificial intelligence to work together to accomplish tasks previously only done by one or the other.

Human artificial intelligence partnerships could change the way the human workforce is trained and utilized across a range of occupations. 

How it Affects You

Massive investment accompanied by deregulation is a good formula to increase innovation. But it’s not necessarily a good way to account for potential unanticipated consequences of a rapid amount of artificial intelligence growth.

Technology is always ahead of the law, and innovation is one of the things that has made the economy of the United States the biggest in the world.

President Trump has likened project Stargate to the Manhattan Project, in reference to the concentrated effort during the Second World War to build a working atomic bomb.

While innovating artificial intelligence could likely grow the U.S. economy it could also create new and unexpected dangers, just as the Manhattan Project did in 1945.