They do not need it. Arguably no one needs it. I am at best luke-warm on LLMs, but how are any sane people rationalizing these requests? What is the opportunity cost of spending a billion or even a hundred billion dollars on compute instead of on climate tech or food security or healthcare or literally anything else?!
I easily see the rich betting a trillion dollars especially if it's not their money and they start employing government funds in the name of a fictitious AI arms race.
They smell blood in the water. Reducing everyone to as minimum wage as possible.
Capital is already concentrated, aligned along monopolies and cartels, oligarchical control, and AI is the final key to total control to whatever degree they desire.
A lot of "the rich's" money is actually backed by the pension funds, 401k and similar investment vehicles.
That's the dirty secret in most of today's world. A lot of ultra-large companies would absolutely deserve getting broken up just for being way too powerful, the problem is any such attempts would send the stonk markets and, with them, people's pensions tanking.
Not really clear what you mean by this. But arguably all of the rich's money (and all money in general) is backed by labour/the ability to exchange that money for someone else's labour.
The amount of shares in many a large company that are held by passive or semi-passive investment vehicles.
It's not just high net worth individuals and nation-state entities (wealth funds) that pump money into YC, Meta, Apple, NVidia, Microsoft and god knows what else, the bulk of the ownerships is held indirectly by the wide masses via one sort or another of pension schemes.
Elon Musk doesn't play with his own money on xAI, he plays with the money of his investors, and so do all the other actors in the AI bubble.
[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...
My knowledge of the insides of Tesla's governance highlights this. The requirement of index funds to invest fixed amounts in in companies allows CEOs to exert more board control and avoid "investor activism" for things like "roman salutes".
The uber rich elites, either directly or through "friendships". And that's my point.
But that is a short-term perspective. Long term, if we do nothing, we remain galley slaves.