I support this, and even more so I believe this is necessary if we believe that academia should exist as a place for researchers to do work not motivated by pro

I support this, and even more so I believe this is necessary if we believe that academia should exist as a place for researchers to do work not motivated by profits. So many AI researchers have moved to work at big tech simply because the resources required for cutting edge ML are so vast. Having a giant collaborative project would make it much easier for universities to retain professors, attract PhDs/Post-docs, etc. They could do work that aims to benefit society as a whole, instead of just happening to benefit society when it's a lucky side effect of benefiting stockholders.