“The most important project of this era.” During the launch of a very ambitious project in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), Tuesday January 21, Donald Trump was praised by Sam Altman, the creator of OpenAI and ChatGPT. And for good reason: the 39-year-old entrepreneur, a major figure in the sector, is one of the three main investors in this major project, called Stargate.
This new company “will build the physical and virtual infrastructures to support the next generation of AI”praised the American president during a press conference, the day after his inauguration. For that, “at least 500 billion dollars” (around 480 billion euros) will be injected into technological installations in the United States over the next four years. Franceinfo explains to you what this artificial intelligence project of unprecedented scale consists of.
An AI “made in USA” financed by SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle
The day after the cancellation of a decree from Joe Biden regulating AI, Donald Trump made little secret about his intentions regarding Stargate: first “guarantee the future of this technology”but above all, “keep her” in the United States. To block the way to “China” and to “other competitors”the new president plans to rely on three tech giants: the specialist in cloud (remote computing) Oracle, Japanese investment giant SoftBank, and generative AI startup OpenAI. A joint statement highlights that SoftBank will hold “financial responsibility” of this new entity and that OpenAI will be responsible for “operational responsibility”.
The boss of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, specified that the project would begin with an initial investment of 100 billion dollars (95.8 billion euros). “We are targeting a total of 500 billion within four years”he explained at the White House. Shortly before Donald Trump’s first term, in December 2016, he made a similar promise of investment of 50 billion dollars (47.9 billion euros). Almost ten years later, Masayoshi Son continued his strategy: he was even the one who took over the administrative management of Stargate.
He is not the only one to believe in this new project: the MGX fund, backed by the United Arab Emirates, provides financial support, as does Nvidia, the world leader in semiconductors. The partners want to unite around Stargate “companies in the data center infrastructure sector, from energy supply to real estate, construction and equipment”according to their press release.
A vast data center network under construction
The development of cloud of AI requires immense data storage capacities, which will boost the need for data hosting and processing centers, the famous data centers. According to the president and co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, Stargate will therefore mainly rely on the establishment of these data centers on American territory. “The first ones are already under construction in Texas.”near Abilene, the executive revealed, referring to “ten buildings of 50,000 m2”. He assured that others will then be installed in other states. OpenAI, a leader in generative AI, said it “was evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses” dedicated to these activities.
-Stargate will also mark a turning point for Sam Altman’s company, which had until now relied on the infrastructures of its partner Microsoft, and which will now be able to count on its own data centers. OpenAI nevertheless took care to specify on its site that it “[poursuivait] his work with Microsoft”its shareholder with 49%. In a report published in September, OpenAI had pleaded with the US government to create giant five-gigawatt data centers, the cost of which was estimated at $100 billion.
This document seems to have resonated with Donald Trump. From the White House, the Republican announced that he would declare a “state of emergency” to remove the obstacles that limit the creation of data centers, with their criticized environmental record. In particular, he would like to allow Stargate to produce its own electricity, without providing more details on how he intends to go about it. The new American president assured that all the operations resulting from the project will make it possible to create “almost immediately more than 100,000 jobs” in the United States.
General artificial intelligence and medicine at the heart of the project
The question comes up more and more often in the debate: can we imagine the creation of an “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), with intellectual capacities equal to or greater than those of humans? In any case, this is the ambition of Sam Altman who is banking heavily on Stargate to “uplift humanity” through AI. Designing an AGI is infeasible without the support of Donald Trump, he assured alongside the American president, reports Reuters.
The other project mentioned by Larry Ellison at the press conference concerns electronic medical records. Thanks to Stargate, he claimed, doctors will be able to consult the practices of their colleagues, without being in the same place. He cited as an example the possibility that a doctor on the Indian River reservation could see how a colleague at Memorial Sloan Kettering would treat a patient. Other perspectives were mentioned, such as the possibility of detecting many cancers through blood tests.
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