Unless the AI industry can figure out how to be profitable soon (to which basically nobody has a clear path to profitability besides maybe ad revenue) it's hard to see this not blowing up in a year or two. The bills for all of this are going to come due eventually and the AI CEOs can only convince investors to keep letting them burn billions for so long.
It's incredible how much money is being lit on fire without anyone having an answer to the question "how will you generate revenue". Meanwhile alternative energy discussions here are met with harsh criticisms of their bottom lines while they have some of the most firm demand of any industry. Society should be prudent with their investments, but only when it's used for R&D into essential stuff and not a bunch of toys for rich psychopaths?
Their only answer is "if we invent AGI and fire everyone, the profits will be limitless".
Zuck has made it clear this is a Pascal's Gamble:
"If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. But I actually think the risk is higher on the other side . If you build too slowly and superintelligence is possible in 3 years, but you built it out assuming it is possible in 5 years, then you are out of position on the most important technology."
His assumption is that superinteligence is close, its just a question of whether it is 3 or 5 years!
No, the first sentence makes it clear that he is aware AGI is not a given. His position is that there is a possibility we can reach super intelligence, and given that possibility they want to be on the bleeding edge and are investing accordingly, given that even total failure won’t cripple their business and all their competitors are doing the same.
"If you build too slowly and superintelligence is possible in 3 years, but you built it out assuming it is possible in 5 years, then you are out of position on the most important technology"
This made me think Zuck sees it as a question of when rather than if. I.e its more a question of 3 vs 5 years rather than possible vs non possible.
And yet, imagine it's 100 million jobs, at 100K per job. That's 10 trillion dollars a year, well worth the investment! Except that it won't be 100K per job that AI companies will capture, it'll be 2K. So that's not 10 trillion dollars a year, it's 200 billion. Which is about what a big tech company makes in advertising already.
That's been the story for the last 20 years of VC culture, and the answer has so often been, ruin the service with advertising.