As Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft forge partnerships and deals, the AI industry is looking more like one interconnected machine. What does that mean for all of us?It all began, as many things do, with Elon Musk. In the early 2010s he realized that AI was on a track to become perhaps the most powerful technology of all time. But he had deep suspicion that if it were to fall under the control of powerful profit-driven forces, humanity would suffer. Musk had been an early investor in DeepMind, the UK-based lab that was ahead of the pack in pursuing artificial general intelligence. After Google bought DeepMind in 2014, Musk cut ties with the research organization. He felt it was essential to create a counterforce incentivized by human benefit, not profits. So he helped create OpenAI. When I interviewed Musk and Sam Altman at the company’s unveiling in 2015, they were adamant that shareholder profit would not be a factor in their decisions.Fast-forward to today. OpenAI is worth a half a trillion dollars, or maybe $750 billion, and its for-profit arm has become a public benefit corporation. Musk, the world’s richest human, runs his own for-profit AI company, xAI. So much for nonprofit labs leading the way. But even the most panicked Cassandra of a decade ago likely didn’t imagine that advanced AI would be controlled by a single, interlocking, money-seeking behemoth.That’s what we have today. Even more concerning, this interlinked complex is funded in part by overseas powers and supported by the US government, which seems to prioritize winning over safety. This rococo collection of partnerships, mergers, funding arrangements, government initiatives, and strategic investments links the fate of virtually every big player in the AI-o-sphere. I call this entity the Blob....
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