If they end up somehow building strong AI, then the investment will pay off in huge multiples and will absolutely be worth it.

If they don't manage to create strong AI, but manage to create a better search engine that somehow replaces Google, then it will be worth the investment (for comparison, Google profit is on the order of $100 billion per year).

There are a lot of other potential products that could bring heavy revenue, even without strong AI. AirBnB has $2billion a year in net profit, which isn't great but it's conceivable that even with the current crappy AI product, OpenAI could make a reasonable amount of revenue. With billions of potential customers, they don't need to make a lot of money off each person.

Remind me again, which refugee crisis did Europe clean up?

Hint: if someone blames everything bad on Netenyahu, they are ignorant.

Netenyahu's approach lost the support of the Israeli voters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Netenyahu's successor was willing to make a ton of concessions for peace: https://www.youtube.com/shorts...

IIRC the Boeing issue was because no one had installed those "Boeing bolts".

German Euro bonds are cheaper than US bonds, so you better rethink your economic theory (and stop watching youtube).

That is not clear at all. Russia keeps threatening to nuke UK because they don't ignore European opinion.

It's true, they had a shortage of shadow puppets, the early form of Netflix.

I wish more would choose Jainism over Islam and Christianity. Many crave some kind of religion, and if such people picked the more peaceful religions there would be fewer busybodies trying to force their beliefs on others.

can the researchers really say with confidence that the civilization would still be with us today?

Nobody claimed it would otherwise still be around. You are putting words in their mouths. It only solved, or at least partly solves a mystery. Usually declines of ancient cities can be traced to invaders, civil war, damaged soil, plagues, etc. This one had no known comparable cause.

Is it possible the smoke & soot from the city changed the local weather?

Here is how the researchers themselves say it:

Don't conflate the arrogant headline with knowledgeable researchers.

They have to wine and dine a few gov't officials before that step.

Globalization happened. You can't rewind the clock and pretend it didn't. The situation we operate under now is different than what we had in the mid-20th century.

They found out somebody accidentally installed Boeing bolts.

That was sad. It didn't change things. The peace process went forward, and Palestine rejected the two state deal.