By MIKE MAGEE
Has America became an “Island of Musk?” He appears to be in all places and nowhere on the identical time. As Trump’s new greatest buddy, he’s opened up the gates of Twitter-hell, morphed into a gentle stream of crypto-cash, and demonstrated his dance strikes alongside Trump at featured venues.
He’s additionally launched “a robotic for each citizen” as part of a cover for sagging expectations for the Tesla Cybertruck, and issued a brand new spherical of hole guarantees on his Robotaxi scheme. In brief, Musk’s ADHD aside, he appears a bit extra unhinged than normal.
In distinction, his arch foe, 38-year outdated OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, is (if you happen to’re to imagine him) nearly professorial. In his own words, “Know-how introduced us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age after which to the Industrial Age. From right here, the trail to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, vitality, and human will.”
A part of the conflict revolves round a single phrase, accelerationalism. Destined to develop into the 2025 “phrase of the 12 months,” this label is more and more assigned to thought leaders in AI who’ve satisfied themselves that AI will quickly rule the world, our politics, and the battle subject, and subsequently “sooner is healthier” is now the mantra on the subject of world-dominating generative AI.
This was not at all times the case. Back in 2015, when Elon Musk and a younger Sam Altman teamed as much as launch a non-profit referred to as OpenAI “to profit humanity,” they each realized that the leased places of work weren’t sufficiently big for 2 alpha males. However in launching their decade lengthy battle for dominance, they agreed that gradual, clear, and deliberative was higher than quick and reckless. Altman wrote on the time, “In an excellent world, regulation would decelerate the unhealthy guys and velocity up the great guys.”
Again then, Musk famously warned, “Mark my phrases, AI is much extra harmful than nukes. I’m actually fairly near the leading edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me.” The place Musk was ”in your face,” Altman was “extraordinarily good and accommodating” which masked a startlingly aggressive underbelly in response to those that knew him properly. As his former associate within the 2011 start-up “Y combinator”, Paul Graham said, “You possibly can parachute him into an island stuffed with cannibals and are available again in 5 years and he’d be the king.” Sam was 23 on the time.
In February, 2018, Musk jumped ship, apparently disagreeing on technique with Altman. After which Altman’s board, in an all-out coup, fired him on November 17, 2023. Twelve days later, they have been compelled to rehire him when main stakeholder, Microsoft, threatened to tug their appreciable assist. Altman, for his half, displayed a conciliatory tone on Musk’s own X-platform, tweeting on his return “Personally, it’s extremely necessary to be taught from this expertise and apply these learnings as we transfer ahead as an organization. I welcome the board’s impartial assessment of all latest occasions.”
On June 7, 2023, 38-year outdated Sam instructed his Congressional questioners that cash wasn’t his motivator. Reasonably “I’m doing this as a result of I find it irresistible.” Sen Richard Blumenthal swooned, “It’s so refreshing. He was prepared, in a position, and keen.” Altman, enjoying to the cameras, stated, “We expect that regulatory intervention by governments will probably be vital to mitigate the dangers of more and more highly effective fashions.”
Simply 9 months later, his Senate supporters have been little question confused to open the Wall Street Journal and uncover the headline, “Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of {Dollars} to Reshape Enterprise of Chips and AI. Open AI chief pursues traders together with the U.A.E for a venture requiring as much as $7 trillion.”
Because the November Presidential election quick approached, Musk and Altman selected totally different venues. Musk attended Trump’s Pennsylvania rally, labeling himself “darkish MAGA” and drawing a headline from the Rolling Stone journal, “Web Viciously Memes Elon Musk’s Jumpy Trump Rally Look.”
Within the meantime, Bloomberg reported a quieter go to by Altman to the White Home to pursue federal funding to pursue an “Unprecedented Knowledge Middle Buildout.” In an abrupt about face, Altman now intends to go massive. How massive? Actually, actually massive – as much as 7 information facilities every consuming 5 gigawatts of energy (the quantity a nuclear reactor generates to energy 3 million properties). Sam now sees future prosperity as a race to the highest.
In his newest thought piece, he asks how did we arrive on the doorstep of the following leap in prosperity? “In three phrases: deep studying labored. In 15 phrases: deep studying labored, acquired predictably higher with scale, and we devoted growing assets to it.”
Musk and Altman do see eye to eye on close to Biblical-level “historical past making.” As Altman wrote in regards to the new AI intelligence arms race, “Right here is one slim method to take a look at human historical past: after 1000’s of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we’ve discovered soften sand, add some impurities, prepare it with astonishing precision at terribly tiny scale into laptop chips, run vitality by way of it, and find yourself with programs able to creating more and more succesful synthetic intelligence…This will likely transform probably the most consequential reality about all of historical past thus far.”
In fact, this previous week’s inconvenient Florida’s Hurricane Milton made historical past of its’ personal. Over 1 1/2 days, it “intensified at an unprecedented fee” morphing from a Tropical Despair to a Class 5 super-Hurricane initiated by 126 tornado warnings. That introduced veteran meteorologist, John Morales, to tears.
Local weather scientists have been fast to remind that between 2019 and 2024, Google’s CO2 emissions, due to AI, elevated by 50%. Not surprisingly, tech entrepreneurs who have been within the lead on preventing local weather change when the supply level was Appalachian miners and Rust Belt producers, have now gone unusually silent on the problem. How they’ll sq. that with projected AI information middle consumption of 17% of all U.S. energy by 2030 stays to be seen.
Musk is now off on his personal, having launched “xAI”, and reducing corners in a recreation of catch-up. In June he opened up an enormous 100 megawatts powered information middle in Memphis, Tennessee coaching AI fashions on the backs of 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors. To energy the plant, he put in 18 pure gasoline generators with out EPA clearance or native permits. The generators will emit 130 tons of poisonous nitrogen oxides. That’s an issue for the individuals of Memphis already inhaling F grade air in response to the American Lung Association.
Mockingly, Forbes says a significant objective of Musk’s xAI is to enhance well being care by way of “process automation, improved scientific workflow, and optimization of scientific productiveness.” Evolutionary psychologist, Robert Wright, (creator of The Moral Animal) means that Altman could have intentionally parachuted onto “an Elon-inhabited island” in 2015 with a brilliant cautious, checks and balances message to seize Musk funding for Open AI. However lower than a decade later, he’s consuming Elon’s lunch and is king of the island of vitality consuming, decidedly non-green, “accelerationalist” cannibals.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common contributor to THCB. He’s the creator of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
