Yikes.
Dirty Money
President Donald Trump’s $500 billion AI infrastructure project, dubbed Stargate, is receiving a ton of funding from an Abu Dhabi-based investment company called MGX — which is led by the United Arab Emirates’ president’s brother, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
According to The Information, the firm is contributing roughly $7 billion to the project, which is hoping to raise $100 billion to build out AI infrastructure in the United States before expanding that figure to a half trillion in several years’ time.
Tahnoun is in charge of a $1.5 trillion empire, reflecting of the UAE’s vast crude oil wealth. He also has a strong interest AI, quickly emerging as one of the biggest investors in the industry.
On the flip side, the national security advisor is also a member of the country’s royal family, which has an abysmal track record when it comes to human rights abuses, from detaining prisoners of conscience to the torturing of immigrant workers. The family’s members also have a well-documented reputation for dodging taxes and laundering money abroad using offshore companies, earning the UAE a spot on the European Union’s “black list” of countries that are failing to keep illicit money flows at bay.
In short, Trump’s massive AI infrastructure project is receiving a ton of dubiously-sourced cash — an ethical miasma that will haunt the program from its earliest days.
Green New Datacenter
By relying on oil money, Stargate also highlights a greater turn away from investments in renewable sources of energy, with progressing AI becoming a far more commonly and easily agreed-upon goal uniting the ultra-wealthy.
None of that seems to have put off multi-hyphenate billionaire and former environmental champion Elon Musk, who met with Tahnoun in September to discuss the “latest developments in advanced technology and AI.”
Tahnoun also met with AI chipmaker Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Alphabet president Ruth Porat since then, as Bloomberg reports. In October, MGX was also one of the biggest investors in OpenAI’s round of funding.
But whether the multibillion gambit will pay off in the long run remains to be seen. While Trump made a big deal out of his announcement of the Starget project earlier this week, he remained noticeably vague on details.
Besides, as several publications have since pointed out, the numbers aren’t quite adding up. While $500 billion in a matter of years seems like a massive stretch, even conjuring up $100 billion might prove extremely difficult.
Musk voiced those concerns in a tweet just hours after the project was announced, arguing that OpenAI doesn’t “actually have the money” and that SoftBank has “well under $10B secured.”
The accusations drew the ire of Altman, though, who accused Musk of being “wrong, as you surely know.”
More on Stargate: Sam Altman Blasts Elon Musk for Defying Donald Trump’s AI Deal
More/Source: https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-ai-stargate-uae-human-rights