Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

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It's a fair comparison. Stargate is fundamentally about two things - America's industry needs a cash injection, and we're choosing a completely hype-dominated vein to push the needle into.

Problem is, the parent comment is right. Even if you think student loan mitigation has washy economics behind it, the outcome is predictable and even desirable if you're playing the long-game in politics. If not that, spend $500,000,000,000 towards onshoring Apple and Microsoft's manufacturing jobs. Spend it re-invigorating America's mothballed motor industry and let Elon spec it out like a kid in a candy shop. Relative to AI, even student loan forgiveness and dumping money into trades looks attractive (not that Trump would consider either).

Nobody on HN should be confused by this. We know Sam Altman is a scammer (Worldcoin, anyone?) and we know OpenAI is a terrible business. This money is being deliberately wasted to keep OpenAI's lights on and preserve the Weekend At Bernie's-esque corpse that is America's "lead" in software technology. That's it. It's blatantly simple.

> America's industry needs a cash injection

Does it? Seems overflowing with it.

>>the Weekend At Bernie's-esque corpse that is America's "lead" in software technology

Compared with who exactly? Certainly not EMEA. Korea is mainly hardware and China has run out of IP to copy.

> completely hype-dominated vein to push the needle into

One, you’re not getting MGX and SoftBank to pay off student debt.

Two, if they do what they say they want to, they’ll be building new power generation, transmission infrastructures and data centres. Even if AI is a hype, that’s far from useless capital.

> money is being deliberately wasted to keep OpenAI's lights on

OpenAI is spending their own money on this.

Gotcha. The fun part is when OpenAI asks for more regulation on AI, congress will be receptive

> fun part is when OpenAI asks for more regulation on AI, congress will be receptive

OpenAI is the Jeb Bush of D.C. They’re spending a lot of money, but it ain’t going far. Last time Altman asked for regulation he had to “jk” backwards when Europe and California proposed actual rules.

>One, you’re not getting MGX and SoftBank to pay off student debt.

I don't think that was the actual literal expectation, rather that the cost to the tax payer - and there will be a cost to the tax payer - should be best spent elsewhere.

>Two, if they do what they say they want to, they’ll be building new power generation, transmission infrastructures and data centres. Even if AI is a hype, that’s far from useless capital.

Nothing has proven this to be true yet

>OpenAI is spending their own money on this.

Not a single entity has spent any real money on this. So far, its a PR stunt. The general lack of roll out corresponding with the announcement is telling. When real money is spent than I'll believe they might go through with it all the way.

Whats more likely to happen is that these companies will spend at most a token amount of money, then lobby congress and the executive branch for subsidies in order to proceed more 'earnestly' and since this is a pledge, there's nothing in writing that binds a contractual commitment of these funds and their purpose, so they could just as well pocket what they can to offset the costs, use what infrastructure gets built as a result, but shut down the initiative. Bad press won't matter, if its reported on at all.

This has played out for decades like this. Big announcements, so called private money commitments, then come the asks from the government to offset the costs they supposedly pledged to pay anyway, and eventually if you're lucky 1 widget gets built in some economic development area and the companies pocket what they can manage to bilk before its all shut down.

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