The Stargate Project: New Age for Data Scientists?

Author(s): Artem Shelamanov

Originally published on Towards AI.

The recently announced Stargate Project, with its massive investment and ambitious goals, is likely to have huge impact on the data science field. In this article, we cover main implications and possible consequences.

StarGate Project: What Is It?

The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States.

It is backed up by multiple companies, including SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. Apart from that, there are multiple influential partners, including Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Oracle. They will closely cooperate to build new-gen AI technologies.

What Does It Mean For Data Scientist?

Good News

• Increased Demand for Data Scientists: With the construction of data centers and the expansion of AI infrastructure, there will likely be a surge in demand for data scientists, machine learning engineers, and other data-related professionals. The project’s goal of creating 100,000 jobs suggests a significant need for skilled professionals.
• In this new “huge-AI” field, most likely all the fine-tunings, API setup and other management will be done on the platform provided from the StarGate company. This means that new professions for doing exactly that may appear, with courses provided from the StarGate itself.
• Technological progress: while the StarGate might not be able to achieve AGI (although who knows), the achievements in the field would be immense. The newest AI technologies might re-shape the world, with more jobs being automated or simplified.
• StarGate project might create new AI technologies in completely different fields like physics, chemistry and medicine. ML technologies are already widely adopted in different parts of scientific research, from predicting period of alpha-decay to analyzing data coming from space telescopes. There is even a small chance of AI being used in design of technologies like spaceships and interstellar transport, which may lead humanity to colonizing other planets.

Bad News

• Given OpenAI’s previous models, the project may prioritize the development of large-scale generative AIs. This means that companies like Meta won’t be able to create small-sized LLMs with the same performance, as they simply won’t have enough resources and workforce to compete. Even more, there is a chance of global AI monopoly created by US/StarGate project. You would either have to use open-source models which perform badly, or you would have to pay a lot for the huge models.
• New skills needed for the jobs: We all can agree that data science field evolves with a great pace. Now, however, the progress rate will be especially immense, most likely in generative AI field (since OpenAI mostly focuses on LLMs and video generation models like SORA). The project might also lead to new tools, frameworks and methodologies that data scientists will need to adapt. This means that even more knowledge would be required to get into the field, and it will be even harder for junior data scientist to find their first jobs.
• US might become the main “center” of AI technologies. With EU regulations getting worse and worse, no other country would be able to compete with US.
• Potential for overhype: if the project fails to meet its ambitious goals, it could lead to disbelief in large-scale AI initiatives, potentially impacting funding and public support for AI research. Elon Musk even already commented that one of the companies doesn’t have enough money to fund the project. We don’t know if it’s actually true, but the fact that project gets criticized days after being announced doesn’t bring much hope.

• Dystopian Future: This idea leans more toward the sci-fi realm, but it’s worth mentioning. Some companies already use AI, particularly computer vision models, to monitor employees or identify individuals. If taken to the extreme, AI could monitor every move of every citizen, tracking their actions in real-time. Combined with data from personal devices, this could create a world where every moment of a person’s life is monitored, recorded, and analyzed — everything done automatically and momentarily.

Conclusion

The Stargate Project has the potential to be the final step into the new age of AI. From one side, it might offer new opportunities, a lot of innovation and technological progress. From the other side, it might make it harder for data scientists to adapt to all the new changes, with their job becoming more and more complicated.

P. S. This article is the mix of official facts and author’s opinions. There is a chance that everything will be completely different compared to the predictions in the article, so make sure to make your own conclusions.

References

1. https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/
2. https://time.com/7209167/stargate-openai-donald-trump/
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-stargate-ai-openai-softbank-oracle-musk/

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Published via Towards AI