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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Kevin Dietsch \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, might be the world\u2019s most valuable private company<\/a> on paper \u2014 but in real life, it\u2019s hemorrhaging money faster than it can ever hope to pay back, at least for now.<\/p>\n According to <\/a>Agence France-Presse<\/a>, OpenAI is ordering hundreds of billions of dollars worth of AI semiconductor chips at a time when investor confidence is being stretched to its limits<\/a>. Those chip investments include deals inked with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, units AFP estimates would consume power equivalent to \u201c20 standard nuclear reactors.\u201d<\/p>\n In order to pay off just its recent shopping spree, OpenAI will have to make \u201chundreds of billions of dollars,\u201d according to Gil Luria, managing director at financial consulting firm DA Davidson. Indeed, another analysis by the Financial Times<\/a> pegs OpenAI\u2019s total financial commitments at over $1 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n With this much capital involved, the exact number is almost meaningless, because the prospects of OpenAI paying off even a fraction of its debt is looking increasingly dire. Though OpenAI is now valued at $500bn<\/a>, the company is only pulling in about $13 billion in annual revenue, the vast majority of which comes from ChatGPT subscribers, per TechCrunch<\/a>.<\/p>\n In short, there\u2019s an astronomical amount of money up in the air \u2014 so much so that the rest of the US economy now depends on the AI industry not dropping the ball<\/a>. Or, as Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon put it<\/a> in a note to investors, Sam Altman \u201chas the power to crash the global economy for a decade or take us all to the promised land.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we don\u2019t know which is in the cards,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n But what exactly that \u201cpromised land\u201d looks like \u2014 and who it\u2019s for \u2014 remains a blind spot which analysts like Rasgon have been careful to tip-toe around.<\/p>\n As some tech critics warn<\/a>, the major gulf between AI spending and revenue isn\u2019t a sign that investors have all lost their minds. Rather, it\u2019s evidence of a brazen bet on the tech which they think could finally make human labor completely obsolete<\/a> \u2014\u00a0thus cementing their control over production and removing the last point of friction under our increasingly unstable economic system<\/a>.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t exactly a deeply guarded secret. Some of the most powerful CEOs in the US have gleefully gone on record to share how excited they are to automate jobs with AI<\/a>, or to threaten their workers<\/a> with replacement. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, to give a recent example, told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that his company was doing \u201cvery, very good\u201d on headcount. By that, he clarified, he means \u201cit\u2019s going down all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n If they get what they want, the big question is: what do these corporate executives expect the rest of us to do when there are no jobs left, especially in an economy where having a job<\/a> is necessary just to get by?<\/p>\n As author and Silicon Valley journalist Malcolm Harris recently challenged<\/a>: \u201cThe thing about AI I want to press people on is why capital feels compelled to invest in AI in particular, and to the exclusion of everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n