AI took center stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with all participants voicing their opinions on the latest $500 billion AI infrastructure project, Stargate. The pretentious project, announced by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle and signed by President Trump, aims to solidify the U.S.’s dominance in AI tech. However, it seems not everyone is thrilled by the new initiative.
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According to a report in the Financial Times, AI heavyweights like Google (GOOGL), DeepMind’s Sir Demis Hassabis, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and AI innovator Yoshua Bengio have voiced serious concerns regarding the rapid pace of AI development. They warn that unchecked AI, particularly with large language models being so accessible, could pose significant risks. Hassabis even mentioned that if AI goes rogue or falls into the wrong hands, it could threaten civilization.
On the other spectrum of the debate, Meta’s (META) chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, argues that restricting open-source AI could lead to a monopoly by a few big players in the U.S. or China. LeCun’s criticism of his peers’ stance on open-source AI has sparked the fire, accusing them of being hypocritical given their own competitive pursuits.
Unsurprising Rifts Among the Tech Community
As expected, the project exposes rifts within the tech community. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, doesn’t look fully aligned with the other actors in the project. Tensions between OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman have been brewing, with Microsoft ramping up its AI efforts. Salesforce’s (CRM) Marc Benioff even suggested that this could spell the end of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.
Stargate is probably the official start of an AI arms race, with companies like xAI, BlackRock (BLK), and Meta also making massive investments in AI infrastructure. Musk’s xAI, for instance, has built a supercomputer with 100,000 Nvidia chips and plans to expand further. On a personal level, he may be somewhat displeased with being left out of the project for the time being.
One thing is for sure: 2025 will be a pivotal year for the AI landscape, both in terms of its path forward and the shape it will take.
