> I just wonder what these people are doing with this money and why they want it so much. $1bn is essentially unspendable. But we see 200 people with 10x that and 15 people with 100x that. I just don't get why they care anymore. But I guess people really care about points?
Money is relative. I bet there are things $1bn can buy that we aren't even aware of because we were never exposed to it. Some of those things are probably non-tangible, like the ability to influence politics and change the world.
I doubt it. Things that cost hundreds of thousands are, for the most part, extremely resource intensive, which is part why they're expensive in the first place. Even rare gems which are small but many of these things are big. The more well known exception to this is luxury items which are just costly for costly sake. The other is art, which can be expensive because desire (like luxury) or scams/tax evasion.
Of course this doesn't mean everyone is aware of these things but they're still publicly known.
> Not all things are physical things. How much does it cost to have thousands of people click at images of cars for your AI model?
I think you're reaching. The things you're talking about have physical impacts. You can't run computers without building chips, developing power systems, and so on. Yes, things of value need not be inherently physical but there are no things that are not connected to the physical world in some form or another.
What I meant to say is "not all things are physical objects". Since you're still referring to physical objects like chips, power systems, and so on. Things that you can buy with money also be not-physical-objects, such as training data harvested from millions of human work-hours.
Money is relative. I bet there are things $1bn can buy that we aren't even aware of because we were never exposed to it. Some of those things are probably non-tangible, like the ability to influence politics and change the world.