OpenAI's plan to make artificial intelligence flow like electricity

By Cade Metz & Tripp Mickle

Late last year, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, started pitching an audacious plan that he hoped would create the computing power his company needed to build more powerful artificial intelligence.

In meetings with investors in the United Arab Emirates, computer chip makers in Asia and officials in Washington, he proposed that they unite on a multitrillion-dollar effort to erect new computer chip factories and data centers across the globe, including in the West Asia. Though some participants and regulators balked at parts of the plan, the talks have continued and expanded into Europe and Canada.

OpenAI’s blueprint for the world’s technology future, which was described to The New York Times by nine people close to the company’s discussions, would create countless data centers providing a global reservoir of computing power dedicated to building the next generation of AI.
 

As far-fetched as it may have seemed, Altman’s campaign showed how in just a few years he has become one of the world’s most influential tech executives, able in a span of weeks to gain an audience with Middle Eastern money, Asian manufacturing giants and top US regulators.
 

It was also a demonstration of the tech industry’s determination to accelerate the development of a technology it claims could be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution.

When word leaked that Altman, 39, was looking for trillions of dollars, he was mocked for seeking investments equivalent to roughly a quarter of the annual economic output of the United States. Officials in Washington also expressed concerns that a US company was trying to build vital technology in the West Asia. To build AI infrastructure in a number of countries, American companies would need approval from United States officials who oversee export controls.

Altman has since scaled his ambition down to hundreds of billions of dollars, the nine people said, and hatched a new strategy: Court US government officials by first helping to build data centers in the United States.

It is still unclear how all this would work. OpenAI has tried to assemble a loose federation of companies, including data center builders like Microsoft as well as investors and chipmakers. But the particulars of who would pay the money, who would get it and what they would even build are hazy.

At the same time, OpenAI has been in separate talks to raise $6.5 billion to support its own business, a deal that would value the start-up at $150 billion.

THE BLUEPRINT

- Create countless data centers for a global reservoir of computing power to build next generation of AI

- Assemble loose federation of firms, including data center builders like Microsoft and investors and chipmakers

- Calls for the Emirates to fund multiple chip-making plants’s cons­tr­u­c­t­ion , costing  $43 bn each

- Discuss fund­ing infrastructure plan with MGX, an AI-focused investment veh­icle by the Emirates

- Reduce chip manufacturing costs for companies like TSMC

©2024 The New York Times News Service