Speaker 1: I'm here on the streets of Abilene, Texas, asking people
Speaker 1: if they've heard of something called Stargate. So have you
Speaker 1: heard of Stargate? I have?
Speaker 2: Have you heard of Stargate?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Have you heard of Project Stargate?
Speaker 4: A little bit?
Speaker 1: Not very much.
Speaker 2: Until recently, I had not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard just so just a smitch about it,
Speaker 3: that it was announced by Trump, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: really all that I've heard.
Speaker 1: A year ago, if you asked me what stargate is,
Speaker 1: I might have said something like, oh, yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial device that allows interplanetary travel by creating a wormhole
Speaker 1: between two ring shaped portals, as depicted in the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four film Stargate and the various television spinoffs.
Speaker 5: How does she old of the Stargate?
Speaker 2: But in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Five, Stargate isn't just something you'll hear about from Jaffa Warriors,
Speaker 1: from Chulac. Now it's something you'll hear from a different
Speaker 1: type of TV personality, Stargate.
Speaker 3: So put that name down in your books, because I
Speaker 3: think you're going to hear a lot about.
Speaker 1: On January twenty first, President Trump flanked by oracles Larry Ellison,
Speaker 1: Open Ai, Sam Altman, and SoftBank's Macioshi Sun announced Stargate,
Speaker 1: an AI infrastructure project investing one hundred billion dollars in
Speaker 1: data center development and a stated intention of investing five
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars over the next four years.
Speaker 3: That's great that you're coming in together. That's a massive
Speaker 3: group of talent and money.
Speaker 1: On Fox News, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt pitched
Speaker 1: Stargate as a triumph for America and the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: President Trump is very excited about this infrastructure announcement in
Speaker 1: the field of AI. From the basic optics of the announcement,
Speaker 1: one might assume that this is some kind of ambitious
Speaker 1: federal moonshot, perhaps the result of a historic high tech
Speaker 1: infrastructure bill. Maybe it's part of something called the Stargate Act,
Speaker 1: but none of that is the case. Stargate is a
Speaker 1: private initiative. Stargate LLC, a joint venture fund by American
Speaker 1: companies open Ai and Oracle, as well as Japanese company
Speaker 1: SoftBank and MGX, an AI investment firm owned by the
Speaker 1: government of Abu Dhabi. At its core, Stargate is a
Speaker 1: tech industry powerplay by the hottest company in AI. Stargate
Speaker 1: will serve chatchipt maker open AI as it builds increasingly
Speaker 1: powerful AI products. And while Stargate is currently investing in
Speaker 1: American facilities, the ambitions are global.
Speaker 2: Want to say this missed that.
Speaker 1: On February third, Sam Altman joined Masiyoshi San on stage
Speaker 1: in Tokyo, where they discussed building out Stargate in Japan.
Speaker 3: The Stargate have to also expand into Japan because of
Speaker 3: the regulation.
Speaker 2: We have to respect.
Speaker 3: The national security, the privacy.
Speaker 5: Loo soft Bank is building a big data center here. Yes, yes,
Speaker 5: so we're going to expand. We're excited to surround on
Speaker 5: Stargate into Japanese infrastructure also right.
Speaker 1: Four days later, Altmann told an audience in Berlin that
Speaker 1: he hopes to find a way to overcome regulatory hurdles
Speaker 1: in Europe in order to expand Stargate there.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm very convinced that most Europeans want AI to
Speaker 5: be used here to happen here. They wanted to revitalize
Speaker 5: economic growth, they want to drive science, they want European infrastructure,
Speaker 5: and so do. We would love to do like a
Speaker 5: Stargate Europe. We need help, but we'd love to build
Speaker 5: something in here. For Europe that government.
Speaker 2: Operate beyond that.
Speaker 1: Amarati Staate owned investment firm MGX, which was not represented
Speaker 1: on stage at the press conference with President Trump, has
Speaker 1: a stated goal of quote enabling the AI fabric of
Speaker 1: the global economy, and on May seventh, OpenAI announced Open
Speaker 1: AI for Countries, described as a new initiative within the
Speaker 1: Stargate project to quote partner with countries to help build
Speaker 1: in country data center capacity. But even if the American
Speaker 1: public has no direct stake in Stargate, the ventures alliance
Speaker 1: with President Trump isn't superficial. The President has promised to
Speaker 1: use the power of the Executive Office to help Stargate
Speaker 1: cut any red tape that may stand in their way,
Speaker 1: an approach towards rapid AI development that marks a star
Speaker 1: change from the previous administration.
Speaker 5: One thing is clear.
Speaker 3: To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk,
Speaker 3: we need to govern this technology.
Speaker 1: President Biden that after signing an Executive Order on ntificial Intelligence,
Speaker 1: the most significant step today in regulating the technology. On
Speaker 1: the day he was inaugurated, President Trump sitting at a
Speaker 1: desk on stage at a rally like event in the
Speaker 1: Capitol One Arena in Washington, d c repealed President Biden's
Speaker 1: AI protections as part of a procession of new executive orders.
Speaker 4: Could you imagine Biden doing this?
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And the very next day, President Trump sought to pave
Speaker 1: the way for rapid AI infrastructure expansion by declaring a
Speaker 1: national energy emergency. President Trump is declaring a national emergency
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 7: Well, this is a first for a president to declare
Speaker 7: a national energy emergency, and in short, we're not in one.
Speaker 7: In fact, most analysts say we have we're very close
Speaker 7: to having a short term oversupply of oil and gas
Speaker 7: in this country.
Speaker 1: With a key Trump campaign promise.
Speaker 6: Drill baby drill in a drill, baby drill.
Speaker 1: Throughout his campaign, President Trump linked the needs of the
Speaker 1: AI industry with a call to increase energy production and
Speaker 1: deregulate the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 3: AI is a big deal for us to compete successfully
Speaker 3: with China and others on AI, We're going to need
Speaker 3: twice the electricity that we currently produce.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that the declaration of a National energy
Speaker 1: emergency is one of several tools that President Trump is
Speaker 1: using to try and help stargate bypass environmental protections and
Speaker 1: other regulations that may impede its rapid growth.
Speaker 3: I will approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new
Speaker 3: power plants, new reactors, and we will slash the red tape.
Speaker 6: We will get the job done.
Speaker 3: We will create more electricity also for these new industries
Speaker 3: that can only function with massive electricity. And we'll get
Speaker 3: it done. And nobody else is even going to come
Speaker 3: to us, They won't even try.
Speaker 1: Partnering with the Trump administration provides a crucial strategic advantage
Speaker 1: for open ai and its allies in the AI race,
Speaker 1: a green light to aggressively pilot their global ambitions on
Speaker 1: American soil, regardless of the consequences, and the first place
Speaker 1: they're breaking ground is in Abilene, Texas. The immediate downsides
Speaker 1: of this are measurable but arguably boring. Mainly, there will
Speaker 1: be a climate impact. Microsoft, which was open AI's exclusive
Speaker 1: cloud computing provider prietor Stargate, has admitted to significantly backsliding
Speaker 1: on its climate goals because of the AI boom. Here's
Speaker 1: what Microsoft president Brad Smith told Bloomberg about the company's
Speaker 1: climate goals.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty, we unveiled what we called our carbon
Speaker 4: moonshot our goal of being carbon negative by twenty thirty.
Speaker 4: That was before the explosion and artificial intelligence. So in
Speaker 4: many ways, as I say across Microsoft, the moon has moved.
Speaker 4: It's more than five times as far away as it
Speaker 4: was in twenty twenty. If you just think about our
Speaker 4: own forecast for the expansion of AI and its electrical needs.
Speaker 1: And President Trump seems to take every opportunity to dissuade
Speaker 1: businesses from relying on renewable energy.
Speaker 6: They can fuel it with anything they want, and they
Speaker 6: may have call as a backup, good clean call.
Speaker 3: You know, the wind is wonderful if you like high costs,
Speaker 3: if you like having to replace the windmills every nine years.
Speaker 3: You know, they wear out, and they're very intermittent, and
Speaker 3: they do kill a hell of a lot of birds.
Speaker 3: If you want to see a lot of dead birds,
Speaker 3: go to a windmill and just look underneath the seat.
Speaker 3: Birds all over the place.
Speaker 6: Nothing can destroy coal, not the weather, not a bomb, nothing.
Speaker 6: It might make it a little smaller, might make it
Speaker 6: a little different shape.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the long term upsides of the
Speaker 1: stargate facilities may be harder to quantify, but sound fantastically utopian.
Speaker 1: Here's Altman, echoing Larry Ellison's hope to use Stargate to
Speaker 1: cure cancer.
Speaker 5: We will be amazed at how quickly we're carrying dis cancer,
Speaker 5: and that one in heart disease, and what this will
Speaker 5: do for the ability to deliver very high quality healthcare,
Speaker 5: the costs, but really to cure the diseases at a
Speaker 5: rapid rapid rate.
Speaker 1: These kinds of monumental outcomes are of course yet to
Speaker 1: be proven, but one thing is certain. The build out
Speaker 1: of Stargate is happening.
Speaker 2: On this week's.
Speaker 1: Episode of The Circuit, I had a chance to tour
Speaker 1: the construction site of the new Stargate facilities being built
Speaker 1: in Abilene, Texas, and here on the podcast, we're sharing
Speaker 1: our extended interview with the man who arguably stands to
Speaker 1: gain the most from this venture, open Ai CEO Sam Alman.
Speaker 1: I sat down with Altman at open AI's headquarters in
Speaker 1: San Francisco a week after the launch of GPT four
Speaker 1: row's new image generation capabilities, a feature that went totally viral.
Speaker 1: I think our conversation revealed a lot about why he
Speaker 1: sees the success of Stargate as essential to continuing open
Speaker 1: AI's status as the leader in the field of AI.
Speaker 2: So I saw what's happening in Appling with my own eyes.
Speaker 2: It's happening. It's happening. People look like they were working
Speaker 2: very hard and fast.
Speaker 5: People never love what I show up for data center business. No,
Speaker 5: why A well, because I like have opinions about how
Speaker 5: you know, like it's not my area expertise, and yet
Speaker 5: I have opinions. And so people are like, Okay, you
Speaker 5: know we've thought about that before, Like is this Yes,
Speaker 5: we're going as fast as we can. Yes, we have
Speaker 5: tried this other kind of cool thing. Yes, we realized
Speaker 5: this is like a stupid way of doing it. We're
Speaker 5: trying to fix something exactly.
Speaker 1: Whistlelone, take me back to the beginning before stargate. What
Speaker 1: did you start seeing that made you realize we need
Speaker 1: more compute, more power, more connectivity, that you were hitting
Speaker 1: a limit and needed to scale.
Speaker 5: We we used to think a lot about the compute
Speaker 5: we would need to train the models, and what we
Speaker 5: didn't used to think about as much as how much
Speaker 5: people were going to use these models. I mean, we
Speaker 5: didn't think about it. Just turned out people want to
Speaker 5: use the models much more than we imagined. And a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago, maybe after the launch of GPT
Speaker 5: four in chatwipt, it really started to hit like, oh man,
Speaker 5: this is this is like gone from a lot of
Speaker 5: compute to like the biggest infrastructure project in history. And
Speaker 5: we started thinking about ways to do it, and we
Speaker 5: started trying to understand where the limits in the supply
Speaker 5: chain were, and out of that emerged Stargate. There were
Speaker 5: other smaller things that we did. First. We have, you know,
Speaker 5: worked with other partners. We've worked with Microsoft to build
Speaker 5: that like very gigantic amounts of compute. But you know,
Speaker 5: this is like the next step in that evolution, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, you traveled around the world talking to people
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: How did you get to talking with Masiyoshi's son and
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison and how did you all come together?
Speaker 5: I'm well, I've known Massa for a long time, but
Speaker 5: I I was on in twenty twenty three. I did
Speaker 5: sort of two long trips. I think that was the year.
Speaker 5: That's all it's all about. I did two kind of
Speaker 5: long trips around the world, and a lot of it
Speaker 5: was to talk to developers and governments, but a lot
Speaker 5: of it was also to just really try to like
Speaker 5: get my head around the supply chain. This is not
Speaker 5: meaning I've done before, Like I had not before thought
Speaker 5: about like what it was going to take to get
Speaker 5: compute up and running at this scale. And there are
Speaker 5: a lot of like hard pieces. And on one of
Speaker 5: those trips I met with Masa. Masa has like thought
Speaker 5: for a long time about chip fabs in particular, but
Speaker 5: really kind of the whole thing that it takes. And
Speaker 5: we got to speaking about what it would you know,
Speaker 5: what it would take to do compute at this kind
Speaker 5: of scale. And then it took us a while to
Speaker 5: figure out. I mean it is a is a complex
Speaker 5: supply chain, a lot of partners and obviously a lot
Speaker 5: of capital, you.
Speaker 2: Know, soft things.
Speaker 1: Obviously your financial partner oracles a technical partner.
Speaker 2: Why couldn't you get what you needed from Microsoft?
Speaker 5: I mean, we do get a lot of great stuff
Speaker 5: from Microsoft, but I think this is more than anyone
Speaker 5: company can deliver. We have. Microsoft will do a lot
Speaker 5: of compute for us a lot long. We We're very
Speaker 5: happy about that.
Speaker 2: Why call it stargate?
Speaker 5: It began as a codename, and sometimes code names stick.
Speaker 2: But it means something, right.
Speaker 5: The design of one of the very early layouts of
Speaker 5: a data center looked a little bit like Stargate from.
Speaker 2: The show A futuristic wormhole.
Speaker 5: Not like that at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, you announced this at the White House the day
Speaker 1: after the inauguration. How did this get to President Trump's
Speaker 1: desk and what was that moment?
Speaker 5: Like, Well, the President is super interested in infrastructure, and
Speaker 5: he's made a big priority which I think is wonderful
Speaker 5: about permitting the energy production and the facilities for the
Speaker 5: data centers. So that was kind of how the conversation started.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're in the middle of a step change for AI,
Speaker 1: and clearly what we saw just in the last week
Speaker 1: from you alone, you're seeing what's next on the roadmap.
Speaker 1: How does that inform what the design of the data
Speaker 1: centers of the future need to be.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think there's like a lot of details
Speaker 5: we're learning about how to design these data centers, what
Speaker 5: you want really at all levels, from like the chip
Speaker 5: to the sort of architecture of whole data center. But
Speaker 5: the main thing that's been on my mind, and I
Speaker 5: think on many people's mind, is just how much inference
Speaker 5: demand there is. We are crazily constrained and we have
Speaker 5: a gigantic computer fleet, like gigantic, giantic and yet still
Speaker 5: if we had twice as much, we would be able
Speaker 5: to offer much better products and services, which just no
Speaker 5: shortage of demand. So for me, there are all the
Speaker 5: technical lessons about what we've learned and how we want
Speaker 5: to build this, but mostly we just want a lot.
Speaker 2: Explain the math to us.
Speaker 1: How does it all add up to needing five hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars because folks out there don't get the accounting,
Speaker 1: who's putting in what, how much funding is really secured?
Speaker 5: How does that add up in terms of like what
Speaker 5: do we need that for? How does the funding come together?
Speaker 2: Like, explain that number? Five hundred billion?
Speaker 5: Oh, well, that covers the capacity we think we need
Speaker 5: for the next few years given our growth projections. You know,
Speaker 5: we we The interesting question is if we had if
Speaker 5: we knew how to get a trillion dollars right now,
Speaker 5: which we don't, would we be able to deploy that
Speaker 5: profit in the next few years? And I'm not sure
Speaker 5: about that, but I feel confident we can like make
Speaker 5: five hundred billion of value back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that, because you just raised even more money,
Speaker 1: you know, or right into open AI.
Speaker 2: How confident? It's a lot of money, tens of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars.
Speaker 1: How confident are you that open ai is going to
Speaker 1: be a financially sustainable and profitable enough company to justify
Speaker 1: all of this investment.
Speaker 5: It's looking like we're doing really well. I mean, like
Speaker 5: we have to. We are definitely doing something unprecedented. But
Speaker 5: you know, it seems like good. Like I feel confident
Speaker 5: in the bed doesn't mean something can't go wrong.
Speaker 2: You tweeted that the GPUs were melting you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't realize we're gonna take that literally.
Speaker 2: I mean, I get that it was a joke, but
Speaker 2: it ran very hot.
Speaker 5: But like the metal is not actually melting.
Speaker 1: GPU shortage, bro that the team can't sleep, you're so busy.
Speaker 1: What happens when a launch goes viral? And how does
Speaker 1: stargate solve for this?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, this level of my route, this
Speaker 5: is an unusual thing this last week. I don't think
Speaker 5: this has happened in the history of tech to any
Speaker 5: company before, like the I don't know of any I've
Speaker 5: seen viral moments, but I have never seen anyone have
Speaker 5: to deal with an influx usage like this.
Speaker 2: You added a million users in an hour or something.
Speaker 5: With yeah, I mean more some hours. But yeah, it
Speaker 5: was like a it was like unprecedented wild and also
Speaker 5: like making an image is not a it's not exactly
Speaker 5: like a low compute task the way we do it
Speaker 5: with the new image then, so we had to do
Speaker 5: a lot of very unnatural things. We had to you know,
Speaker 5: borrow compute capacity for research. We had to slow down
Speaker 5: some other features because it's not like we have like
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of GPUs sitting around just like spinning idly.
Speaker 5: So with if we had more GPUs, we would be
Speaker 5: more able to handle demandswer just like this, and also
Speaker 5: we wouldn't have to put such restrictions on I was
Speaker 5: just this morning making the list of what we have
Speaker 5: what we'd like to launch in the next few months,
Speaker 5: and I was like, you know, I had the list
Speaker 5: over here, and I had like my rough math of
Speaker 5: when we're getting GPUs here and where I thought we
Speaker 5: could get the efficiency games, and I was like, this
Speaker 5: is not gonna work. Like we're gonna have to like
Speaker 5: pull some of these things, make some trail of limits,
Speaker 5: some things I don't like, but this is not all
Speaker 5: of this is not going to fit here.
Speaker 2: So it's that directly linked.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean you can find efficiency gains and we
Speaker 5: chart to do. You can limit features and usage and
Speaker 5: we do that too. But you know, more compute means
Speaker 5: we can give you more AI and you can use
Speaker 5: it for images or write softwareor whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Elon's got his own data centers and XAI just bought
Speaker 1: x which means he's got access to all of that
Speaker 1: additional data.
Speaker 2: He claims Grock is the smartest AI on Earth. How
Speaker 2: do you think it compares?
Speaker 5: I don't use it much. I think it's probably a
Speaker 5: very good model.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously there are lots of competitors out.
Speaker 5: There, there's a lot of good models. I think I
Speaker 5: think good models will become very bountiful, very plentiful.
Speaker 2: So what's your edge going to be the best.
Speaker 5: Infrastructural air and the best top of the stack. You know,
Speaker 5: we have way more people use chatpt than use any
Speaker 5: other AI service, way more, and I think you'll see
Speaker 5: with a lot of the new futures we roll out
Speaker 5: that will become more of an advantage over time.
Speaker 2: So, once this is all built, what's the grand vision?
Speaker 5: Give people tools to let them do whatever they're going
Speaker 5: to do better. You know this is in some sense
Speaker 5: this is like it is different this time, But in
Speaker 5: many other senses, this is just like another tool and
Speaker 5: another piece of technological history. People will use it and
Speaker 5: unuse their creative energy and make all sorts of stuff
Speaker 5: that you and I love, or some stuff that we don't,
Speaker 5: or stuff that just entertain themselves personally. The area I'm
Speaker 5: most excited about is air for scientific discovery. I think
Speaker 5: that will you know, we're not there yet, but we're
Speaker 5: not far away. I think twenty twenty five will be
Speaker 5: a world where we have agents do a lot of work,
Speaker 5: but work of the kind of work and things we
Speaker 5: already know how to do. I'm hopeful that twenty twenty
Speaker 5: six will be a big year of like really new
Speaker 5: scientific progress.
Speaker 1: Do you envision multiple stargets on every continent? Like where
Speaker 1: else are we going to see you break ground?
Speaker 5: You will see them on in the comments?
Speaker 2: Yes everywhere, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Mind everywhere, Like this is like you want to visit
Speaker 5: on this These are hard things to do.
Speaker 2: Well, Look, this is an audacious bet on the future.
Speaker 2: What are the risks?
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe you know people stop wanting to like
Speaker 5: pay for AI services and then we have a difficult
Speaker 5: financial position. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about one chip maker in Nvidia
Speaker 1: having so much power over the industry, the future of
Speaker 1: the industry.
Speaker 5: They make an incredible product, and if you make an
Speaker 5: incredible product, then people want it. This is what happens
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about the jobs then, because
Speaker 1: obviously we saw so many people working there. There's this
Speaker 1: lofty promise that AI data centers are going to create
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of jobs. Meantime, AI is destroying jobs elsewhere,
Speaker 1: and I feel like even you know, there is serious
Speaker 1: anxiety out there. People are scared totally, even among the
Speaker 1: best engineers and technologists, people are scared.
Speaker 2: What do you say to those people?
Speaker 5: AI is for sure going to change a lot of jobs,
Speaker 5: totally take some jobs away, create a bunch of nuance.
Speaker 5: This is like the kind of this is what happens
Speaker 5: with technology. In fact, I think if you look at
Speaker 5: the history of the world, like technological driven job change
Speaker 5: or whatever you call it, when like one class of
Speaker 5: jobs go away, another one pop up, like that's very consistent.
Speaker 5: It happens to it's punctuated, but like that's just been
Speaker 5: happening for a long time. And the thing that is
Speaker 5: different this time is just the rate with which it
Speaker 5: looks like it will happen. The thing I think the
Speaker 5: world is not ready for, Like people have maybe abstractly
Speaker 5: thought like, Okay, it's going to be a better programmer
Speaker 5: than me, it's going to be you know, better at
Speaker 5: customer support and whatever. I don't think the world has
Speaker 5: really had the humanoid robots moment yet, and I don't
Speaker 5: think that's very far away, so from like a visceral like,
Speaker 5: oh man, this is going to do a lot of
Speaker 5: things that people used to do. So yeah, it's commune,
Speaker 5: and we have always tried to just be super honest
Speaker 5: about what I think the impact may be, realizing that
Speaker 5: will be wrong on a lot of details.
Speaker 2: What happens when the humanoid robots get here.
Speaker 5: I mean, they'll obviously do a lot of jobs. But
Speaker 5: the point I was trying to make is I think,
Speaker 5: like the first day you're like walking down the street
Speaker 5: and there's like seven robots that walk past you doing
Speaker 5: things or whatever, it's going to feel very sci fi.
Speaker 1: Deep Seek appears to have found a more efficient way
Speaker 1: to power AI. Was that a moment of rethink for you?
Speaker 1: And are you doing anything differently.
Speaker 5: Now, I think the deep CPAM is very talented and
Speaker 5: did a lot of good things. I don't think they've
Speaker 5: figured out something like way more efficient than.
Speaker 2: We figured out, But do you think there is a
Speaker 2: more efficient way to.
Speaker 5: Will? We have made incredible efficiency strides here every year,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure we'll keep doing that in the future.
Speaker 2: So if that's the case, why are you building all this?
Speaker 5: If we had an AI that we could offer at
Speaker 5: one tenth of the price of current AI, I think
Speaker 5: people would use it twenty times as much, and we
Speaker 5: would still need twice as much compute to say, to
Speaker 5: despide the then current demand.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that Jevins paradox, Like, how do
Speaker 1: you think Jevins paradox applies here? That you know, technological
Speaker 1: progress means paradoxically you're going to be using more resources, doesn't.
Speaker 5: It doesn't. This never seemed like a paradox to me
Speaker 5: at all. Like, you know, we talk about supply demand
Speaker 5: curves and elasticity and all sorts of other things, and
Speaker 5: then people are like, ah, but I'm in a tricky
Speaker 5: with Jevins paradox, and it's like, this is just the
Speaker 5: way the world works.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, But you do think there will
Speaker 1: be more efficient ways.
Speaker 2: What are those things? Is it better chips?
Speaker 5: Is it is all of the above. It we will
Speaker 5: have better chips, we will have better energy sources, we
Speaker 5: will have better algorithms. We will optimize. I mean this
Speaker 5: is just this is like what industry does. We will
Speaker 5: optimize everything.
Speaker 1: There's no question that China is going to be a
Speaker 1: formidable for sure in AI. How do you think about
Speaker 1: opening eyed chances to win a global race?
Speaker 5: You know, probably actually have some deep thoughts of about
Speaker 5: that we're doing the best we can, Like we just
Speaker 5: wake up every day thing how we can be a
Speaker 5: little bit better? I don't know how to like, I
Speaker 5: don't know how our actions would change based off of
Speaker 5: like some deep answer to that question.
Speaker 1: President Trump is in power at a pivotal time for
Speaker 1: AI development.
Speaker 2: What do you think his mark on this moment will be.
Speaker 5: I think he will get to make some of the
Speaker 5: most important decisions anyone in the world has gotten to
Speaker 5: make related to AI. And you know, I'm optimistic he's
Speaker 5: really he'll really do the right thing there. But I
Speaker 5: don't like his an unineviewable job.
Speaker 1: Right the velocity of we were talking about a launch.
Speaker 1: Is the velocity of innovation here is just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: The speed at which you're releasing new things, the speed
Speaker 1: of what's coming at what I saw of rising from
Speaker 1: the red dirt in Abilene. How do you personally grapple
Speaker 1: with the pace of it all.
Speaker 5: That's one thing that's really impressed me about President Trump,
Speaker 5: by the way, is his ability to just like understand
Speaker 5: the whole industry and all the changes and quickly seem
Speaker 5: to have very good intuition and make good decisions about
Speaker 5: it while things are changing so fast. Has really been
Speaker 5: quite impressive to me.
Speaker 2: But what about you personally?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna say, I I'm in it every day,
Speaker 5: and so I don't like it's like watching your own
Speaker 5: kid grow. Like you, day to day you just see
Speaker 5: every change, and so it's like not as striking. It
Speaker 5: does feel like it's going very fast. It's certainly I
Speaker 5: certainly think if I could like transport myself back three
Speaker 5: years ago, it would seem like unimaginable progress. But you know,
Speaker 5: day to day you can kind of get used to anything.
Speaker 1: Well, since you mentioned kids, you just had a baby,
Speaker 1: has that reframed anything for you?
Speaker 2: Total?
Speaker 5: I mean, like look, I don't think I had anything
Speaker 5: non cliche to say here, but it's the best, most
Speaker 5: amazing thing ever, and it totally rewired all of my priorities.
Speaker 5: I remember and like the first hour I felt this
Speaker 5: neurochemical change and it happened so fast. I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I get to like observe this, like I am being
Speaker 5: like neurochemically hacked, but I'm like noticing it happening, and
Speaker 5: I'm totally fine with this is worth it, This is great,
Speaker 5: But like everything is going to be different now?
Speaker 1: What about how everything that you're doing here and building
Speaker 1: all this, what it means for humanity?
Speaker 2: Has it reframed any of that?
Speaker 5: A lot of people have said, I'm very happy you're
Speaker 5: having a kid because I think you'll make better I
Speaker 5: think you'll make better decisions to whatever degree you have,
Speaker 5: Like a, you got to make decisions here for humanity
Speaker 5: as a whole. I really wanted to get it right before,
Speaker 5: do the best I could. I still really want to
Speaker 5: now it Uh it's somehow, Yes, it somehow does feel
Speaker 5: like it's different, but I can't articulate how.
Speaker 1: H All right, So we talked about the pace, the breakthroughs.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you know, the fear and the
Speaker 1: anxiety out there.
Speaker 2: As you keep moving forward.
Speaker 1: If chat ChiPT were to discover a stargate, a futuristic
Speaker 1: wormhole that we could all travel through, what's on the
Speaker 1: other side, Like, what do you see that.
Speaker 2: The rest of us?
Speaker 5: Don't you have touch your particulate like transports to the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, through a stargate a wormhole? Please humor me on
Speaker 2: the world?
Speaker 5: No idea, I mean, no one knows right like it's
Speaker 5: gonna it's going to discover like AI. I believe AI
Speaker 5: will help dramatically, like unbelievably dramatically accelerate the pace of
Speaker 5: science and human discovery and our understanding of what's possible.
Speaker 5: But like, do I think I could have sat here
Speaker 5: in nineteen oh five and told you what we were
Speaker 5: about to discover in physics and that forty years later
Speaker 5: we would like have an atomic Definitely not. And I
Speaker 5: think I am way too self aware of my own
Speaker 5: limitations to sit here and try to say I can
Speaker 5: tell you us on the other side of that one.
Speaker 5: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: But not good, yes, happy, better, a better world.
Speaker 5: Up and down, not better in every way, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I think up into the right to the right with
Speaker 5: some choppiness. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Probably the most prominent skeptic of stargate is Elon Musk.
Speaker 8: Just hours after Donald Trump announced this project and declared
Speaker 8: it would create one hundred thousand new jobs quote, almost immediately,
Speaker 8: Elon Musk slammed the initiative and suggested it will never
Speaker 8: get off the ground.
Speaker 1: Musk, of course, was a co founder of Open and
Speaker 1: has since severed ties. He now runs his own competing
Speaker 1: AI company, Xai, and has become one of Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: fiercest critics.
Speaker 5: Now you're seeing maybe a little bit of a faltering
Speaker 5: in the bromance between Elon Musk and Donald.
Speaker 2: Trump, because Sam Altman is now getting in the picture.
Speaker 1: Surely Elon Musk's AI ambitions also stand to gain from
Speaker 1: Trump's deregulatory actions. It's no secret where Musk's political allegiances lie.
Speaker 4: I'm not just.
Speaker 1: Naga, I'm dog Gothic maga. But Sam Altman is a
Speaker 1: less obvious ally for the Trump administration. In a twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen blog post mainly about President Trump's views on immigrants,
Speaker 1: Altman wrote that quote to anyone familiar with the history
Speaker 1: of Germany in the nineteen thirties. It's chilling to watch
Speaker 1: Trump in action, and yet just one day after Trump's
Speaker 1: second inauguration, Altman is the one standing next to the
Speaker 1: President announcing his ambitious plans to dominate the hottest emergent
Speaker 1: industry in the world.
Speaker 5: We wouldn't be able to do this without you, mister President,
Speaker 5: and I'm thrilled that we get to.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg recently reported that three months after the Stargate announced,
Speaker 1: SoftBank has yet to successfully raise funds for the project,
Speaker 1: with factors like tariffs, economic volatility, and fears of overcapacity
Speaker 1: making the investment a hard cell. But Sam Altman clearly
Speaker 1: has his site set on a very big goal. On
Speaker 1: May eighth, he announced Instacart CEO Fijisimo would be joining
Speaker 1: open Ai as CEO of Applications, saying quote, I'll remain
Speaker 1: CEO of open Ai, but in this new configuration, I'll
Speaker 1: be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety.
Speaker 1: These are critical as we approach superintelligence. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to see this target construction in Texas, you could check
Speaker 1: out the circuit on Bloomberg TV or the Bloomberg Originals
Speaker 1: channel on YouTube. We had a very rare interview with
Speaker 1: soft Bank CEO Masayoshi's Sun.
Speaker 6: This is amazing, explosive rose of ins.
Speaker 1: We talked to residents and elected officials in Ablene, Texas.
Speaker 1: The big picture to me is AI is going to
Speaker 1: take over and then where are we as humans? And
Speaker 1: we toured the site of the first Stargate facilities with
Speaker 1: Chase lock Miller, the CEO and co founder of Crusoe,
Speaker 1: the company managing the build out.
Speaker 5: Why a lot of this development is taking place in
Speaker 5: Texas that Urkhot is the most deregulated grid, it's sort
Speaker 5: of the easiest to get approval.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in there, so definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: This has been the Circuit podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: hear more extended interviews like this, please rate and review
Speaker 1: our show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you
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Speaker 1: with a friend. Our senior producer is Lauren Ellis. Our
Speaker 1: writer and editor is Billy Disney. I'm Emily Chank, your
Speaker 1: host and executive producer. Thanks for listening.