On Tuesday, I was thinking I might write a story about the implications of the Trump administration’s repeal of the Biden executive order on AI. (The biggest implication: that labs are no longer asked to report dangerous capabilities to the government, though they may do so anyway.) But then two bigger and more important AI stories dropped: one of them technical, and one of them economic.

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Stargate is a jobs program — but maybe not for humans

The economic story is Stargate. In conjunction with companies like Oracle and Softbank, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman announced a mind-boggling planned $500 billion investment in “new AI infrastructure for OpenAI” — that is, for data centers and the power plants that will be needed to power them.

People immediately had questions. First, there was Elon Musk’s public declaration that “they don’t actually have the money,” followed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s rejoinder: “I’m good for my $80 billion.” (Microsoft, remember, has a large stake in OpenAI.)

Second, some challenged OpenAI’s assertion that the program will “create hundreds of thousands of American........

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