AI leaders clash over security and the $100bn Stargate project

The biggest figures in artificial intelligence were spared this week’s World Economic Forum as Donald Trump boosted his estimated $500 billion AI infrastructure project.

AI pioneers Sir Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, Anthroponic co-founder Dario Amodei and computer scientist Joshua Bengio, the “Godfather of AI”, used the summit in Davos to reiterate stark warnings about the dangers of AI as business interests and geopolitical rivalry steamroller over security concerns. .

Although Hassabis knows that “the genie cannot be put back in the bottle”, Artificial general intelligence – When computers surpass human cognitive abilities – they can threaten civilization if left out of control or hijacked by bad actors. This is especially the case with large language models that are “open source” and accessible to all.

“There is more at stake than just companies or products,” the Nobel laureate said in an interview with the Financial Times. “(This is) the future of humanity, the human condition and where we want to go as a society.”

Amodei, a startup built and developed Chatbot Cloud. Powered by Google And Amazon, which is concerned about authoritarian governments using AI and says it’s “worried about 1984 situations, or worse.”

“Science doesn’t know how we can control machines at our level of intelligence, or even if they are smarter than us,” Bengio said on the panel. “Don’t worry, there are people who say we can help. But if we don’t know, do you understand the consequences?”

Their position has been criticized as hypocritical, with Meta’s chief AI scientist, Lama, having spent billions developing an open-source LLM. Such concerns were belied by intense competition from rivals to build and sell the best models.

“Joshua and Dario made comments on open source and that’s really dangerous,” he said in the interview. “A few players who are barriers to resource distribution, from the US or the west coast of China . . . (by placing) power in the hands of a few.

“It’s amazing from people like Dario. We met yesterday that the benefits and risks of AI are roughly in the same order of weight, and ‘If you really believe that, why do you keep working on AI?’ I said.” LeCun added. “So I think he’s a little two-faced on this one.”

While scientists and engineers debate the risk-reward of AI, business executives have shown unbridled enthusiasm for the technology.

“There are no contradictions,” said Ervin Tu, president of the Dutch technology investment group Process. “If you have an appreciation for what large language models and agents trained on them can do, you shouldn’t conclude that they are humanly transformative and incredibly disruptive in every industry.”

On Wednesday, the feverish atmosphere was further fueled by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Announcing a $500 billion US AI infrastructure partnership It is called “Stargate”.

Trump hosted CEOs Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison in the Oval Office on Tuesday, before signing executive orders this week that would remove many of the safeguards around the technology’s development. The new US president said that the measures will ensure American leadership in technology.

“At OpenAI, we believe infrastructure is destiny,” said Sarah Freer, chief financial officer of OpenAI. “[Stargate]is more calculated. More computing builds better models. Better models can answer complex problems and offer many benefits to people and businesses.

Stargate dominated the debate at Davos for the rest of the week, with many, including Elon Musk, taking to the social networking site X to ask how the trio were doing. It covers a wide range of costs.

The FT reported on Friday that Stargate has yet to secure the funding it seeks, does not receive any government funding, and will serve Open AI Once completed. So far, SoftBank and OpenAI each intend to commit more than $15 billion to the project, hoping to leverage equity and debt from existing backers to finance Stargate.

The new venture is seen as the latest evidence of ties between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and top AI executive Mustafa Suleiman, the former DeepMind founder who left his startup to join Microsoft early last year.

“Last year’s tension between Mustafa Suleiman and Sam Altman in Davos was just the beginning,” said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, which competes with Microsoft to sell AI-powered agents to businesses.

“Microsoft is now accelerating its own AI development. . . . This pattern reflects Microsoft’s history with its ‘partners,'” Benioff added.

“Mark has no idea what he’s talking about,” said Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw.

Microsoft As of 2019, it has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI and in return has negotiated rights to its intellectual property and become the exclusive provider of cloud computing services. But the latter deal was terminated with Stargate’s announcement.

In Davos, Nadella cast doubt on Stargate’s spending promises and Microsoft’s $80 billion capital spending spree.

“All I know is that I’m good for 80 billion dollars,” he said later Responding To Musk on social media platform X: “And all this money is not about empowering AI, but about building useful things for the real world!”

Stargate is the latest example of the infrastructure arms race for data centers in the US. Musk built xAI a A super computer called “Colossus”. In three months last year, it contained 100,000 interconnected Nvidia chips and promised to increase that number by 10 times.

BlackRock and Microsoft are preparing to launch a $30 billion AI investment fund to build data centers and energy projects to meet growing demand from the technology sector. On Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will spend $60-65 billion on capital infrastructure this year as it expands its AI teams.

“I had constant client meetings in every sector. I don’t think there’s a single CEO I’ve talked to who doesn’t know they need to deploy AI,” said OpenAI’s Friar. “AI is not just on the agenda; It’s the agenda. It is not just an abstract concept or vision of the future. It’s here.”

Additional reporting by Harriet Agnew in Davos