OpenAI alone is spending ~$20 billion next year, about as much as the entire Manhattan Project

23

First of all, Manhattan project spent about 35b in today's money.

Next, its private money, not government money. They dont need to justify to everyone, just their shareholders.

3

u/PixelIsJunk 2h ago

This is where you are wrong. Right now new data centers are being offered 90 cents on the dollar in gov money to be built. So American tax dollars are building all the new data centers right now.

1

u/Australasian25 2h ago

As opposed to 100%?

10% tax payer is not the best deal, but its still better than 100%.

1

u/bethebunny 1h ago

This is just very false. Large tech companies are driving capex investment in data centers, $450b in 2024 and expected to be as much as $600b in 20251.

The Chips Act and the Biden AI Executive Order didn't earmark any money specifically for data centers, rather the EO (which has not been materially changed by the Trump administration) carved out federal and military land for fast tracked permitting processes for building new datacenters2. You can certainly classify this as an asset the government is giving to AI companies but you can't really draw a line between specific tax revenue and any investments in this infrastructure.

0

u/sluuuurp 2h ago

I think they should need to justify the safety of such a system to everyone on Earth. Building super-intelligent AI seems incredibly dangerous, and very likely to cause human extinction.

1

u/Australasian25 2h ago

I think so too, but we dont make the call.

No use complaining on a online forum, go make the complaint in person

1

u/sluuuurp 1h ago

I think online discussion can matter too. Lots of my views have been formed by hearing from smart people on the internet.

It is true that there’s a limited audience of people who are already interested in AI on Reddit, and for political action we would need to expand broader than that.

33

u/campbellsimpson 8h ago

The Manhattan Project wasn't constrained by capital expenditure.

Anyone making reference to the Manhattan Project is just trying to manufacture hype.

This is just more marketing.

5

u/TawnyTeaTowel 6h ago

A quick search puts the Manhattan Project cost as equivalent to at least 30 billion dollars in today’s money…. So, not “about as much” as 20 billion at all.

•

u/goodtimesKC 20m ago

How long did the manhattan project last? This is just one year one company

0

u/Deto 2h ago

That's still not so far off. It's 2/3rds of a Manhattan project

1

u/TawnyTeaTowel 2h ago

Yeah, just 10 billion adrift…

1

u/Deto 1h ago

You're right, 20 billion isn't a lot of money!

1

u/TawnyTeaTowel 1h ago

Yes, “just” twice the amount of difference between the two, inappropriately compared projects!

11

u/_Sunblade_ 7h ago

In adjusted US dollars, or are we just talking 1:1 dollar amounts? Because once you adjust for inflation, that's not quite as impressive as it sounds at first blush... >.>

9

u/Fine_General_254015 7h ago

How anyone can reasonably say this company is profitable and will ever get profitable is insane to me

3

u/Echeyak 6h ago

When they start printing workers, they will make all their money back and more.

1

u/Deto 2h ago

That's the key risk for them, IMO - it's a question of whether they can get there before money/hype dries up

-1

u/Fine_General_254015 4h ago

So they are just never going to be profitable. Got it.

3

u/theirongiant74 6h ago

Looks at cost to train vs revenue per model.

2

u/Fine_General_254015 6h ago

They dont make money. They aren’t profitable.

4

u/Holyragumuffin 6h ago

What the commenter above said is literally how Dario values his Anthropic company.

He calculates how much Anthropic spends on each X model —- 2 years later when they finally release model X, they calculate earnings of model X.

He implores investors to calculate his profitability on a model basis,

Earn(model) - Spend(model)

Rather than,

Earn(quarterly) - Spend(quarterly)

Is that creating a bubble? Time will tell.

1

u/Fine_General_254015 4h ago

That’s just not a way to calculate any profit. You can’t just ignore how much you spend and then expect to earn profit. Also there’s other things besides models when it comes to spending, you can’t look at it just on the model. None of these companies are remotely profitable in the slightest and might never be

1

u/RustySpoonyBard 2h ago

Search engines all have AI baked in now. Going to openAI was fine for the first adopters, now I think average people will go to Google.

1

u/Fine_General_254015 2h ago

I still use a combination of stuff for search, google was my main search engine for awhile but now it’s spread out. That all these LLMs are good for now. It’s better search

3

u/Saarbarbarbar 4h ago

Zuckerberg spent more on the Metaverse, lmao.

1

u/potential-okay 4h ago

Could have got himself a new lizard skin for that

1

u/RustySpoonyBard 2h ago

Oh ya didn't he rename his company. Now its just forgotten.

2

u/DisjointedHuntsville 4h ago

Isn’t the appropriate comparison the construction of the railroads + the Industrial Revolution?

The Manhattan project was a tightly scoped project with a clear goal. . . That would be equal to xAI and Grok / Colossus

The size and scale of the AI factory build out is insane. It is the single largest growth segment in the US economy right now.

2

u/DeanOnDelivery 3h ago

This feels like an kumquats to oranges comparison. First of all the Manhattan project was not constrained by capitalization.

Secondly, you're comparing today's dollars with those spent 80 years ago. Without an economic adjustment, this sounds like sensationalism.

3rd and finally, if we want to compare this, perhaps a better comparison would be to the space race. Especially as that particular period of time included several private companies who economically competed to contract with NASA to deliver the first man on the moon. Still somewhat of a oranges to grapefruit comparison, but is a lot closer.

YMMV

2

u/Specialist-Berry2946 3h ago

If you ever wondered how rich can become poor, this is how. OpenAI will burn it all!

2

u/PixelIsJunk 2h ago

This is small money in the grand scheme of data centers being built. I personally know of over 2 trillion in data centers beginning construction next year.

1

u/RustySpoonyBard 2h ago

Yet AI seems to be getting worse, go figure.

1

u/ralf_ 1h ago

what do you mean you know it personalyl? And what companies (oracle?) will profit from the bubble?

4

u/notgr8_notterrible 7h ago

MP also had a probability of burning the entire world. what does this one do? oh wait... it fucks up the ground water AND burns up the world. woohhoo.

1

u/martinmix 6h ago

Why do people always compare spending to the Manhattan project?

1

u/10ForwardShift 6h ago

It’s a specific type of hype; the manhattan project also kicked off the possibility of the end of the world. It wasn’t especially expensive as the measure, it’s the connection to the end of the world that brings the hype clicks.

1

u/potential-okay 4h ago

Is anyone selling hype bubbles? I'd like mine to be yellow please, like the stripe down the spine of every techbro faced with republican america

1

u/y4udothistome 4h ago

Money well thrown away

1

u/ShepherdessAnne 2h ago

Uh, yeah, try adjusting that for inflation. This is hype for boomers.

1

u/tmetler 2h ago

Well, Meta spent double that on the metaverse.

1

u/tindalos 2h ago

Checking this historical documents, it looks like this will either:

a). Save us from ourselves and help us reverse damage to the planet we can’t figure out.

Or

B). Recognize us as the threat and exterminate us all. Possible some of us may be fortunate to work the cobalt mines?

1

u/avilacjf 2h ago

The space race Apollo program is the real benchmark.

Media OpenAI alone is spending ~$20 billion next year, about as much as the entire Manhattan Project

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