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These debts mean nothing if the US government actually views AI technology as being on par with the Manhattan project. They'll just bail them out or nationalise
by King-Aaron 3mo ago
These debts mean nothing if the US government actually views AI technology as being on par with the Manhattan project. They'll just bail them out or nationalise them.
- tchalla 3mo agoThe advantages of being a reserve currency and then also blaming your peer competitors as “manipulators”.
- elictronic 3mo agoChina is a currency manipulator who steals patents and ideas from other countries. The US uses the reserve currency as it's most beneficial soft power. The Petrodollar is the clearest example of this by a large margin. Both are true.
- tchalla 3mo agoThe US also stole patens and ideas from other countries. So did Germany and Italy and pretty much every other country on this planet. Yeah, it is true that the US doesn't like a challenger here and when someone doesn't play by the rules that they want to set, they get upset. Everything is true, yes.
- oblio 3mo agoThey can only do that if AI is profitable or at break even. Otherwise they would need to finance these companies yearly.
- dandanua 3mo agoIn other words, the US gov will simply put all the debt onto the public, as usual.
- richardw 3mo agoIf the US companies need trillions to barely beat Chinese companies spending billions, despite a multi year head start...
- rmunn 3mo agoThat's the difference between innovating and copying/distilling someone else's innovation. https://wccftech.com/chinas-kimi-k3-identifies-itself-as-anthropics-claude-in-at-least-one-conversation-betraying-its-distilled-origins/ https://wccftech.com/chinas-kimi-k3-identifies-itself-as-ant...
- JoshTriplett 3mo agoAs opposed to all the copying AI companies have done of everyone else's work, in order to build something that tries to replace and undercuts the people who did that work? World's smallest violin.
- rmunn 3mo agoNot saying the American AI companies are ethically in the right, just that the work they did is a lot more expensive to do than what the companies distilling their work are doing.
- throwaway676712 3mo agoThis meme must die, how did Kimi 3 even distill Fable or GPT 5.6 within weeks of their being available? Also, how a model identifies itself isn't very telling, many models when asked in Chinese will identify as DeepSeek
- bogdan 3mo agoI'll link to this comment as a rebuttal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984531
- rmunn 3mo agoGood UIs look alike, yes. But I'm not sure that comment is a good rebuttal in this particular case, because the model calling itself Claude is pretty strong evidence of distilling: https://x.com/denisewu/status/2077984660211269870 https://x.com/denisewu/status/2077984660211269870
- WoodenChair 3mo ago> These debts mean nothing if the US government actually views AI technology as being on par with the Manhattan project. They'll just bail them out or nationalise them. According to Wikipedia, the Manhattan project only cost $28 billion in 2024 dollars. That's a completely different order of magnitude compared to what we're talking about here. I imagine the size of the investment here would even be hard for the US government to swallow.
- 3form 3mo agoWhat percentage of the budget was it? I think that's also needed for a meaningful comparison. I've heard about the war taxes being high, but I don't know anything about the economy of the time otherwise.
- dwattttt 3mo agoI didn't have budgets handy, but GDP is another way to normalise its cost to the country; ~$2.2B cost in 1942 with a nominal GDP of $166B, nominal GDP of $29.2T in 2024 puts the Manhattan Project's cost relative to GDP at $386B in 2024. Nominal GDP from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_statistics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_statistics_of_the_Uni...
- King-Aaron 3mo agoI wasn't actually comparing it in terms of dollars for dollars between the projects, more the national security aspect and the probability of the government pulling whatever levers are necessary to keep it going.
- walrus01 3mo agoOr, whole program development and per unit costs included, about the equivalent of 14 units of B-2 bombers in 2024 dollars.
- King-Aaron 3mo agoI just made a similar comment further down the chain here, but I frankly think the dollars and cents economics around AI is a moot point. Like the pentagon, they'll just pull money out of thin air, or from other departments, or just write things off like it never existed. I don't actually think the current administration, or the people behind it, actually care about real world economics anymore.
- dartharva 3mo agoThey'll bail them out with what money? US is already almost $40T in debt, how do you think the bond market would react if another $2T were abruptly added to it?
- tmp10423288442 3mo agoSeemed fine with adding that much during Covid
- King-Aaron 3mo agoLook at how the pentagon is funded. Trillions get poured in with zero accountability, dark projects that never get disclosed at all, and audits that never pass. When it comes to military level stuff, it seems to exist outside of normal financial logic. They just invent money for it.
- laughing_man 3mo agoHere's the thing about debt, though: If your debt is denominated in your own sovereign currency, you can just print more when you run out of money.
- JohnFen 3mo agoWhich doesn't get you more wealth. It just makes the currency worth less.
- laughing_man 3mo agoYes, but that can be a good thing, from your perspective, if you owe a lot of money.
- lbrito 3mo agoThat mostly only applies to other countries. Global US dollar demand absorbs a large amount of the extra whenever the US decides to print more. US is the only country in the world that can export inflation.
- 3mo ago
- laughing_man 3mo agoIf they bail them out it should be done like the GM bailout. Shareholders leave with nothing.
- anonymousiam 3mo agoAnd all salaried retirees lost their pensions and medical coverage, while the hourly ones kept everything. Thanks Obama!