In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
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@michael_w_busch @diazona @paco Also: how many trees need to be cut to produce those 2000 tons of rag paper?
> Federal Reserve notes are a blend of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. Currency paper has tiny red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths evenly distributed throughout the paper.
Currency Facts
The U.S. Currency Education Program shares several unique facts about U.S. currency.
U.S. Currency Education Program (www.uscurrency.gov)
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In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
But I want to know: if we had $200B in, say, $100 notes, and we literally set them on fire:
- would it dispose of the money faster? How long would it take?
- would the impact on the environment be worse or less bad?
I gotta think there is someone on the #fediverse with the wherewithal to figure this out. Surely if we boost this, it will nerdsnipe the right person and we will learn the answer.
@paco @davidgerard Depends if you burn them in parallel or not and it depends on the oxigen supply. If you would burn this as one big connected line of paper, you would burn something that would go 7800 times around the world, so that would be a roll almost a meter thick going around earth. If you would burn that in parallel, I am lacking imagination how long it would take.
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@paco @davidgerard Depends if you burn them in parallel or not and it depends on the oxigen supply. If you would burn this as one big connected line of paper, you would burn something that would go 7800 times around the world, so that would be a roll almost a meter thick going around earth. If you would burn that in parallel, I am lacking imagination how long it would take.
@paco @davidgerard However, for the fun of it, let us assume that a dollar bill takes 2 minutes to burn. Then burning once around the world would take 975 years!
So burning 7800 times that one after another would take 7.5 million years. So, to put that in perspective, if I can believe my understanding of Wikipedia, 7.5 million years ago Wolves were state of the art, and no-one talked about monkeys.
So yes, if you don't want to burn the money on a heap, it will be slow compared to OpenAI.
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@paco @davidgerard However, for the fun of it, let us assume that a dollar bill takes 2 minutes to burn. Then burning once around the world would take 975 years!
So burning 7800 times that one after another would take 7.5 million years. So, to put that in perspective, if I can believe my understanding of Wikipedia, 7.5 million years ago Wolves were state of the art, and no-one talked about monkeys.
So yes, if you don't want to burn the money on a heap, it will be slow compared to OpenAI.
@paco @davidgerard And yes, this was just a calculation on a lazy day and I may have made tons of little errors. Somewhen in the middle I had a version that confused minutes and days.
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One advantage of doing the test this way is the uncertainty in the time estimate is high enough that nobody (except possibly your financial advisor and some carefully chosen charities) notices you only burned $199.99B instead of the intended $200B.
@dpnash @revk @paco @davidgerard Surely the people to ask are the KLF (or K Foundation)
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In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
But I want to know: if we had $200B in, say, $100 notes, and we literally set them on fire:
- would it dispose of the money faster? How long would it take?
- would the impact on the environment be worse or less bad?
I gotta think there is someone on the #fediverse with the wherewithal to figure this out. Surely if we boost this, it will nerdsnipe the right person and we will learn the answer.
-
In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
But I want to know: if we had $200B in, say, $100 notes, and we literally set them on fire:
- would it dispose of the money faster? How long would it take?
- would the impact on the environment be worse or less bad?
I gotta think there is someone on the #fediverse with the wherewithal to figure this out. Surely if we boost this, it will nerdsnipe the right person and we will learn the answer.
@paco @davidgerard burning the cache would have saved a lot of energy wasted and would mean we can have a swimming pool in the summer as my water would not have been used in the local data center...
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In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
But I want to know: if we had $200B in, say, $100 notes, and we literally set them on fire:
- would it dispose of the money faster? How long would it take?
- would the impact on the environment be worse or less bad?
I gotta think there is someone on the #fediverse with the wherewithal to figure this out. Surely if we boost this, it will nerdsnipe the right person and we will learn the answer.
@paco @davidgerard
Closest test run would be the KLF https://youtu.be/21nhIZ9QF80?si=v6R5hpfydU0G_q_S -
@michael_w_busch @diazona @paco I looked up the capacity of my local incinerator (officially called the "Dublin waste to energy facility") and it says they handle 600,000 tonnes a year.
So the 2000 tonnes of bills would only last a day or so.
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@stufromoz @paco @davidgerard @briankrebs Can’t just pop them into a top loader and expect them the shred like a tissue in your jeans pocket
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In his latest “Pivot to AI” OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due, @davidgerard (accurately) says: “#OpenAI works by setting as much money as it can on fire, as fast as possible.”
But I want to know: if we had $200B in, say, $100 notes, and we literally set them on fire:
- would it dispose of the money faster? How long would it take?
- would the impact on the environment be worse or less bad?
I gotta think there is someone on the #fediverse with the wherewithal to figure this out. Surely if we boost this, it will nerdsnipe the right person and we will learn the answer.
@paco @davidgerard Wouldn’t call it nerdsnipe. More like nerd carpet bombing
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