They also propose that their services will be so key to some sectors (like pharma) that they'll also seek revenue sharing as part of the companies getting the privilege to use the most cutting edge intelligence. Insane stuff honestly.

All I'm going to say is I'm actually really hoping that China stays competitive in this field. Just like they are delivering EVs for $25k to the world it'd be great for all consumers and companies if they can also deliver 90% of the AI performance for 1/10 of the cost.

Anyways, OpenAI is not in profit-seeking mode, and there's no economic incentives to do so right now.

They can blend leverage, 100% 1st year depreciation with using the hardware itself as a financing asset and dozens more financial engineering steps -

Their actual cost of financing is probably incredibly low already.

I worry that they are thinking of trying to run the company just ahead of debt/lease payments or something, otherwise this is just a distraction

So they want even more?

Which indicates to me that the value add will come from somewhere else, which would seem to be whales and addicts.

The real play is to socialize their risk while keeping profits private. When markets call this “innovation,” it’s worth remembering: that’s not capitalism working — that’s capture.

Also this is not a loan for what has already been done so far, this is what will be built out in the future, so the US is getting something in return: huge amounts of infrastructure, most of which would be datacenters, chips, and power. (In an alternate timeline this would be clean power, or at least be built out in Australia, cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45836104 -- but sadly this is not that timeline.)

Worst case, when the bubble pops, we get a glut of power and compute which (ideally) should reduce overall electricity and the obscenely bloated cloud bills. However, at the rates that demand is growing, this seems unlikely.

So to rephrase: The real problem is that the infra needed to support the forecasted growth is very expensive, and requires trillions in funding, which gets very expensive to borrow. And so the US government is being asked to provide loan guarantees, because who better to appreciate what interest payments on trillions of debt look like?

OpenAI asks U.S. for loan guarantees to fund $1T AI expansion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830380

Not to mention that it is propping up the stock market. Ain't no way the current admin will allow the biggest financial crisis to unfold on their watch.

Let. It. Burn.

Corporate leadership in America has a megalomania problem. Billionaires in general have a megalomania problem. OpenAI specifically, apparently, has a megalomania problem.

Every startup begins with lots of debt and little revenue and a all in bet that it’ll change. Sam’s company unsurprisingly follow same playbook

You think that Trump won't demand something in return for this?

I keep telling everyone I know that AI will be enshitified just like every other internet business. Tell me why the incentives will be different this time around. Putting yourself in hock to an aspiring authoritarian is certainly one way to supercharge that process.

What do you think OpenAI's output about Jan 6 will be one year from now if this goes through?

Perhaps the government should loan OpenAI $1 billion so it can donate to a four times larger ballroom, upon which it will receive $100 billion in public money to fund the TikTok Sora videos.