Comment on Big tech has spent $155 billion on AI this year. It’s about to spend hundreds of billions more
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoTransatlantic telegraph, I think, was very expensive, or Panama channel projects. Before they were finished to any useful degree.
In this particular case - I don’t think it’s more expensive than Soviet attempts at turning Kazakh steppe into agricultural land, let alone all the space and defense projects.
It’s an ideology-driven effort all right - an idea that you can create an inherently totalitarian technology. Probably caused by the popular (in the 90s and early 00s) belief that the Internet is inherently anti-totalitarian, so there’s a need to compensate. Both are wrong.
wewbull@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I think there was an inherent demand behind those examples though. Just the number of lives lost looking for the northwest passage showed how useful the Panama canal would be.
You’re also comparing government spending in a lot of those cases Vs private capital. That fact shows how much power has shifted in the world already.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, in the Soviet example everything was government.
And governments seem to be so excited by the prospects of this “AI” so it’s pretty clear that it’s still their desire most of all.