We would have heard if they had hired/bought the size of team necessary to design a system large enough to be a significant impact. Modern (eve sub 28nm much less 2nm) design is hugely complex and the range of things that an AI compute engine needs to do are very broad.

Perhaps they could design a core and license it out? I'm trying to come up with a way they can do something significant without 100 people. Just the memory and serial connections are complex enough ignoring the GPU or heat/power issues.

It took apple like 10 years to go from their first chips to actually using them in laptops, and they are literally the most well capitalized company on the planet. Sorry if I'm skeptical that some relative up starts with a billion in compute from Microsoft can compete with trillion dollar companies that have been around for decades.

Nobody can even define what AI is, why we need it, or how to achieve it. Usually it makes sense to seek funding to execute on a plan. Making a fancy chat bot that scrapes the web to synthesize sometimes accurate and sometimes useful information is not worth trillions of dollars.

What is essentially happening in my opinion is technical innovation has slowed so silicon valley is seeking money to prop up a house of cards that doesn't make much new that is useful or needed.

Can anyone specifically say what trillions of dollars invested in "AI" would buy for society?

It seems to me there are so many higher priorities.

I wouldn't bet against it but that approach has a remarkably low rate of success. We hear about the winners - survivorship bias is real.