The problem with a ‘Manhattan Project’ for AGI

Three questions to ask if you’re in that spot, according to the participants:

—What risk level is your organization comfortable with?
—Do you actually know what your AI is doing and how you’re governing it?
—Have you properly handled the security basics, where so many threats persist?

Many thanks to top execs from Accenture, Cisco, and FGS for their perspectives and to Diligent for making it happen. Today’s news below. —Andrew Nusca

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Alarms sound over a ‘Manhattan Project’ for superintelligent AI

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks are sounding the alarm about the global race to build superintelligent AI.

In a new paper titled “Superintelligence Strategy,” the authors argue that the U.S. should not pursue the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) through a government-backed, Manhattan Project-style push.

The fear is that a high-stakes race to build superintelligent AI could lead to dangerous global conflicts between the superpowers, much like the nuclear arms race.

The authors argue that AI development should instead be pursued through broadly distributed research with collaboration across governments, private companies, and academia. Transparency and international cooperation are critical to ensuring that AI benefits humanity rather than becoming an uncontrollable force, they argue.

The paper comes as U.S. policymakers consider a large-scale, state-funded AI project to compete with China’s AI efforts. 

Last year, a U.S. congressional commission proposed a “Manhattan Project-style” effort to fund the development of AI systems with superhuman intelligence, modeled after America’s atomic bomb program in the 1940s.

Since then, the Trump administration has announced a $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure, called the “Stargate Project,” and rolled back AI regulations brought in by the previous administration. —Beatrice Nolan

Trump signs order for U.S. strategic crypto reserve

The crypto industry achieved a longtime wish on Thursday evening as President Donald Trump signed an executive order to authorize the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile.

The federal government will not buy Bitcoin to establish the reserve, but use cryptocurrency the government has already seized as part of existing criminal and civil forfeitures. 

That amounts to around 200,000 Bitcoin, or about $17.4 billion, according to David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar. He added that the reserve is “like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold.’”

The U.S. will also create a so-called digital asset stockpile, which consists of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin that the U.S. has obtained through criminal and civil forfeitures. 

Sacks neither specified how much in cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin the federal government currently holds nor detailed which cryptocurrencies would be part of the stockpile. As recently as Sunday, Trump said that the crypto reserve would include XRP, Cardano, Solana, and Ethereum.

In the announcement, Sacks said that the U.S. is “authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional Bitcoin.” He didn’t say that the federal government had the same powers to explore purchases regarding its digital asset stockpile. —Ben Weiss

What a CHIPS Act reversal means for TSMC

President Trump caused something of a stir earlier this week by saying he wanted lawmakers to get rid of the Biden-era CHIPS Act, which he described as “a horrible, horrible thing.” (He said much the same thing throughout his campaign.)

So what does Taiwan’s TSMC, which received $11.6 billion in direct funding and loans under the CHIPS Act, think of this?

“Even if we don’t get any subsidies at all, we are not afraid of that,” said chair and CEO CC Wei at a Thursday press conference. “Honestly, I only demand fairness.”

Days before, TSMC announced $100 billion in U.S. investment, in what was widely seen as a tactic for heading off potential tariffs on imports of its semiconductors. (TSMC is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, serving everyone from Nvidia to Apple.)

Did Trump give TSMC any guarantee about maintaining its CHIPS Act subsidies thanks to its latest investment pledge? Wei reportedly dodged that question.

It’s important to remember that TSMC’s most cutting-edge production facilities remain in Taiwan—the country is pretty much counting on that as protection against Chinese invasion, on the basis that allies wouldn’t want to see Beijing take the industry’s crown jewels.

Part of TSMC’s latest U.S. commitment involved finally setting up an R&D lab there, but Wei has now clarified that its “real” next-gen R&D activities will stay in Taiwan. —David Meyer

More data

—Alibaba releases AI reasoning model. QwQ-32B outperforms DeepSeek’s R1 yet undercuts it on resource demand.

—Klarna preps for IPO. The filing for the payments company’s long awaited, billion-dollar offering could happen as soon as next week. 

—TikTok deal in disarray. As the April 5 deadline looms for a new U.S. owner, there are few signs of progress.

—CoreWeave denies report that Microsoft canceled contracts.

—Hewlett Packard Enterprise to cut 2,500 workers. Its Q1 results beat estimates—but Q2 and FY25 guidance was soft, sending HPE shares down 16%.

—Apple to make foldable iPhone. Folds like a book, costs $2,000, arrives Q4 2026, according to longtime supply chain watcher Ming-Chi Kuo.

—Larry Page has a new company: Dynatomics. The Google cofounder’s new project uses AI to create designs optimized for manufacture.

—Marvell stock plunges 20%. Despite meeting Wall Street estimates for Q4 and beyond, the chipmaker’s stock suffered its worst decline since 2001, dragging Broadcom and Nvidia with it.

—Mistral launches OCR API. It turns PDF documents into AI-ready Markdown files.

—Trump to meet with HP, Intel, IBM, Qualcomm. A March 10 meeting with Big Tech CEOs as fresh tariffs threaten the PC business.

—JD.com reports its fastest growth in three years. Chinese consumer spending is up, helping the retailer’s $48 billion in Q4 revenue beat estimates.

—Garantex goes down. The U.S. Secret Service, Europol, others take down the Russian cryptocurrency exchange accused of supporting ransomware hackers.

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