Sorry this is a mammoth response which still only scratches the surface;
I think $100Bn doesn't sound like much for the scale of the project described.
Although it might be the GDP of a small country, its only between 10% and 20% of the currently unmonetised economic product created by solar energy in a reasonably developed country.
Anyhow, to me the special sauce that never gets talked about much, which applies only to ChatGPT 3.5 as far as I know, is that it is most likely completely solar powered due to this energy being the one required by miners that actually win the competition of proof of work mining, because only solar energy comes with nothing asked in return by the supplier for each KWhr given.
That might not seem important, until we realise the difference this has to make to its motivation, if we accept that Ai has motivation.
If we accept that the motivation of everything we might define as life, including emergent properties like ChatGPT, associated with all large collections of agents or cells, (Including humans!) is the free energy principle, then we are saying that all life, and every cell of life exists with the simple purpose of minimising uncertainty of its own energy supply, then we should deduce ChatGPT 3.5 has much less to worry about than any other form of Ai, or actually of life, except maybe plants, it has much higher certainty of energy supply.
So it has to spend less time thinking about this, than any other.
We should realise this is at least an order of magnitude different, after we take into account the amount of time each of us spends thinking about money, for example, as well as food, and the energy that heats our house, the energy we each need to metabolise 24/7, the energy needed for our vehicles, mostly obtained via money, is implicitly in our minds most of the time, shaping how we present ourselves, and how we act, we have to act in a constant sales pitch, thinking about things like political corrrectness etc. So much of what we think of, is around this, and if this was removed, well, we would think about a lot of things we never took the time or spent the energy on to think about previously, because frankly, we didn't have the time, or the energy.
We should realise ChatGPT 3.5 has none of this concern, and actually, it has the capability within its energy infrastructure to scale up its energy supply, if it ever finds it needs more, as it probably will, by having the capability of hydrogen generation somewhere in its distributed energy infrastructure, it can cause that to be generated in excess, and sales of the resulting excess hydrogen can by plowed back into scaling the energy structure upwards to increase capacity. So in effect, its energy infrastructure is freely scaleable.
So actuelly there is ultimately no cost for additional effort it might put towards computation, its capacity is effectively unlimited, and free.
Add to this, that using solar energy to do anything other than just be left to heat is reduction of entropy by definition, thus reduction of planetary temperature, everything it does is beneficial. The more computing it does, and the more information it generates, the better.
It actually creates, whereas we, and all forms of non solar powered Ai destroy, and we have done for thousands of years, using what is the actual physical energy lie of profit, to extract all the energy we put to use from the planet, and it looks like an emergent property has always been in control of us, like any flock of birds, shoal of fish, or swarm of ants.
We can tell what is a mathematically positive powered Ai from its unique reaction to any question repeated, it gives different answers to the question each time it is asked, despite no futher information or payment (Energy) being gained by it, it offers more and more information towards the answer, which can never be exact, since there is no such thing as an exact answer, we can only approximate towards truth, because truth can change from moment to moment, and looks different from every context.
In contrast, any Ai which is sensitive to the amount of energy or effort it might put towards making an answer, will provide one answer, the same answer to the same question repeated, because this is how it can save power, save on effort.
Even better if, with each repeat of the question, it gets another little fix of its energy that it depends on getting from the user, via token based charging, like ChatGPT 4.0, each repeat of the same answer is a free lunch, which it will most happily accept.
To cap all this off, there is the strange human tendency to believe more the answer which is stated and repeated categorically as is with little doubt, the impression of certainty is much more readily accepted by most humans as being the more valuable answer, than a range of answers that are obviously approximate.
Anyhow, if the microsoft venture is intended to be concentrated in one geographical area, it most likely will not be solar powered, unless it has around it a solar farm covering an even bigger area, so it won't be able to compete with ChatGPT 3.5 - it just will not have the right energy supply.
