"We Could Hit An AI Air Pocket": Deutsche Prices Superintelligence At $900 Billion... Per Training Run

Silicon Valley's bet is simple: build enough compute and the machines will start improving themselves, delivering superintelligence by the end of the decade. Deutsche Bank decided to check the math. The result: the science might work, but the bill is staggering, and it's increasingly being paid with debt.

In its must-read 20-page "AI boom or doom: what will superintelligence feel like and when will we get there?" (Oct 12), the Deutsche Bank Research Institute's Adrian Cox tests what Eric Schmidt calls the "San Francisco Consensus" against physical reality. And the quote that stood out came not from DB, but from inside Google DeepMind itself:

The $900 Billion Training Run