don't buy into the hype, but when Facebook has spent around as much on GPUs as the Manhattan project (but not the Apollo program), the comparison kinda makes itself.
The Big Dig (Boston highway overhaul) cost $22bn in 2024 dollars. The Three Gorges dam cost $31bn. These are expensive infrastructure projects (including the infrastructure for data centers). It doesn't say anything about how important they are for society.
Comparing LLMs to the Manhattan Project based on budget alone is stupid and arrogant. The comparison only "makes itself" because Ethan Mollick is a childish and unscientific person.
>Comparing LLMs to the Manhattan Project based on budget alone is stupid and arrogant
Just want to clarify. The comparison to Manhattan Project or CERN is referencing "the countless small hands feeding the machine." In projects such as these, roles and jobs are divided into small parts, that people who are working on it don't really see the forest from the tree, and that only a few that has the picture of the whole project.
https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1786213463456448900
$22 in 2008 -> $33 today https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=22&year1=20080...