DONALD Trump is championing a $500billion project to use Artificial Intelligence in bold new ways – ushering in a “Golden Age” of America.
The plan, dubbed Stargate, aims to draw together the world’s biggest technology giants to cure cancer and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Collaborating with leading companies in the AI industry such as OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, the initiative’s main goal is to secure the future of technology in the United States amidst the competitive landscape dominated by China.
Trump said it should create 100,000 new jobs after starting with a $100billion data centre based in Texas.
Potential funding for the project might reach an impressive $500 billion, with the new administration committed to reversing the policies of the previous administration, which were criticized for promoting extreme left-wing ideologies within technology development.
OpenAI claims the project will “generate massive economic benefit for the entire world” as the tech paves the way to “elevate humanity”.
CEO of the tech firm Sam Altman told the newly-minted President: “we wouldn’t be able to do this without you”.
The President highlighted that the advancements in technology could lead to breakthroughs in healthcare, expressing optimism about the accelerated pace at which diseases like cancer and heart disease could be cured.
Altman believes AI can help “cure the diseases at a rapid, rapid rate”.
Trump, 78, said: “These world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate.
“So put that name down in your books, because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future — a new American company that will invest $500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States.”
Speaking of China, he said: “What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country.
“China is a competitor, others are competitors. We want to be in this country, and we’re making it available.”
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison agrees that the bold new project could cure cancer.
He said: “Little fragments of those [cancer] tumors float around in your blood.
“So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test.
“Once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person —design a vaccine for every individual person that vaccinates them against that cancer.
“That mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically, again using AI, in about 48 hours.”
SoftBank CEO, Masayoshi Son, said it marked “the beginning of the Golden Age of America”.
He said “artificial super intelligence will come to solve the issues that mankind never, ever have thought that we could solve”.
Despite Trump’s bold claims for the new project, his tech tycoon pal and trusted confidante Elon Musk wrote on X under OpenAI’s post: “They don’t actually have the money”.
Trump began his presidency on Monday with a flurry of executive orders.
Some undid several of Biden’s directives aimed at curtailing AI because of risks caused by the ever-evolving tech.
One such order from 2023 required AI firms to share safety data with the US government if their tech posed any kind of risk to national security, the economy or public health.
A 2024 Republican Party pledge read: “We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.
“In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
