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Both the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program were 0.4% of GDP. With today's GDP of $27T, $108B would be equal — Meta have only spent less than a third of t
by maratc 2y ago
Both the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program were 0.4% of GDP. With today's GDP of $27T, $108B would be equal — Meta have only spent less than a third of that on GPUs.
- petermcneeley 2y agoProbably would be better to look at is as compared to federal government spending. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
- thrdbndndn 2y agoWhy? I think comparing to GDP percentage make more sense in this case, since the point is to compare their economical scale, not how invested the gov is on these projects. (Not to mention, one side (meta) has little to do with government funding to begin with.)
- eru 2y agoWhy would that be a better or worse indicator?
- willis936 2y agoI feel like this move's the goalposts a little bit. In the recent MFTF thread people compared the entire 70 years of fusion research funding (about 80 Bn USD) to the Apollo program. This is in the context that the research is heavily underfunded given its applications and potential viability. If we agree that society got an Apollo Program's worth of value out of the Apollo Program, what value has society gained from Facebook's resource usage? A more effective manipulation engine?
- sinuhe69 2y agoValid question. But one thing is public and the other thing is (kinds of) private, so no they aren’t comparable. Besides, Meta open sourced their results, so in my opinion they should deserve a better status, allow them to access resource and indemnity like libraries. Perhaps only if they spin off their AI research into a non-profit entity, but yeah open source is digital public good and deserve a special status.
- eru 2y agoThey got lots of ads out of it. People paid for those ads voluntarily. What Facebook does with the money they earn is up to them. Would you have asked the same question if Mr Zuckerberg had spent it all on yachts?
- echelon 2y ago> less than a third That's still an insane amount of money.
- marcosdumay 2y agoSo... A single company has just spent about 0.1% of the US GDP in a pet project, and it's not even the leading one on the market? That's just incredible, and not a good thing.
- brevitea 2y agoDo we know if the Meta AI effort is subsidized by the US Government?
- mlsu 2y agoI would challenge that a little bit -- I think it is a good thing, given that they have open-sourced the results of the project. It seems to me to be far better than a company which simply gives 0.1% of US GDP back to shareholders in the form of dividends or stock buybacks, which is a very common occurrence given the size of companies nowadays. Or worse, a company which spends 0.1% of US GDP manufacturing things that are wholly useless or even actively damaging to consumers, the environment, etc.
- klyrs 2y ago> or even actively damaging to consumers, the environment, etc. Jury's still out on this one
- WalterBright 2y agoThe shareholders normally just reinvest the dividends. That isn't bad for the economy. > manufacturing things that are wholly useless Companies manufacture things that people want to buy. Presumably those people find the things useful. Companies that manufacture things people don't want go out of business.
- gdsimoes 2y ago> Companies that manufacture things people don't want go out of business. Do they, though? When was the last a time a really big company went bankrupt?
- 7e 2y ago- Meta is paying for these GPUs over multiple years, not a single year. Meta capex is only $30B a year, not all of that went to GPUs. - There's no way Meta is paying retail.
- ncallaway 2y agoI don’t think the Manhattan Project was a single year either?
- oskarkk 2y agoIt wasn't, but we're comparing to the yearly budget of Manhattan/Apollo (as a fraction of GDP). NASA budget was between 0.3-0.9% of GDP in 1963-1970[0], that was per year. In 1965 GDP was $743B (nominal), so 0.5% of that is ~4B, and the (nominal) cost of Apollo (which wasn't the whole NASA budget) was 25B. As aa part of GDP from 1970 (1.073T) the total cost of Apollo would be like 4% of that single year's GDP. Not a good comparison because when Apollo started GDP was 563B and was 1.3T when it ended. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-NASA-Appropriations-and-as-a-Ratio-to-GDP-Per-Capita-1958-2005-Constant-2007_fig4_323116968 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-NASA-Appropriation...
- brandall10 2y agoFrom the linked tweet: "Yann LeCun confirms that Meta spent $30 billion on a million NVIDIA GPUs"
- qeternity 2y agoYann is not a CFO. If I buy a house tomorrow, I don't just consider it a massive one-day expense. They will amortize the cost over the useful life of the hardware.
- brandall10 2y agoThis was addressing the second point which is relevant to the headline: "There's no way Meta is paying retail."
- arbuge 2y agoExceeded by Apple's stock buyback then, $110B.
- eru 2y agoIt's good that Apple is giving resources back to the rest of the economy, yes.
- fastball 2y agoMoney isn’t a resource.
- eru 2y agoYes, that is true. However that distinction only really makes a difference in analysis when you are talking about the behaviour of organisations that can create money. Like (central) banks, or at a considerable stretch, Amazon issuing gift-cards. Companies returning money to shareholders is pretty much equivalent to companies returning economic resources to shareholders.
- acchow 2y agoThat’s production, not inflation
- twoodfin 2y agoSure, but the point is that long run real economic growth made it possible for a big-but-not-biggest US company to invest at a level attainable only by the US government in wartime 80 years ago.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mr_toad 2y agoIf you add together the expenditure (or revenue) of all companies the sum will greatly exceed GDP.
- choppaface 2y agoAnd also for perspective: if ad spend globally hits $1T in 2027 then Facebook has put down about 3% today to perhaps own 30%.
- anacrolix 2y agoBut those projects were purely American funded projects. Meta profits from the entire globe. So I don't think a comparison to the US GDP is completely relevant.