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Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

semianalysis.com

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Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#21

Post by rvz »

> The premise of the paper is that while OpenAI and Google continue to race to build the most powerful language models, their efforts are rapidly being eclipsed by the work happening in the open source community.

Another magnificent unsurprising set of correct prediction(s) [0] [1] [2] and as triumphantly admitted by Google themselves on open source LLMs eating both of their (Google) and OpenAI's lunch.

"When it is the race to the bottom, AI LLM services, like ChatGPT, Claude (Anthropic), Cohere.ai, etc are winning the race. Open source LLMs are already at the finish line."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34201706

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35661548

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34716545

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#25

Post by com2kid »

endisneigh wrote: post #23

it'll be fun to see the pikachu face when engineers are expected to do more, with the aid of these tools, but are not paid any more money.

Kind of like every other improvement in technology? From interactive terminals, to compilers, to graphical debuggers?

Nothing new there.

What productivity improvements have opened up is more opportunities for developers. Larger and more complex systems can be built using better tooling.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#26

Post by tiniuclx »

benjaminsky2 wrote: post #6
tiniuclx wrote: post #3

I've been using Stable Diffusion to generate cover images for the music I release & produce for others. It's a massive time saver compared to comping together the release art using image editing software, and a lot cheaper than working with artists, which just doesn't make sense financially as an independent musician. It's a little bit difficult to get what you want out of the models, but I find them very useful! And…

> artist whose domain has not yet been disrupted by AI fires artist in favor of AI

I'm already using AI to make my music production process more efficient! Namely, I'm using a program called Sononym which listens to my tens of thousands of audio samples and lets you search by audio similarity through the entire library, as well as sort by various sonic qualities.

I think I'd still go for a human artist for a bigger release such as an album! It's a lot less hassle than sorting through (often rubbish) AI output & engineering your prompts, though it does cost £££ which is the main thing making it prohibitive for single releases.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#28

Post by ealexhudson »

Reubend wrote: post #9

Great read, but I don't agree with all of these points. OpenAI's technological moat is not necessarily meaningful in a context where the average consumer is starting to recognize ChatGPT as a brand name. Furthermore, models which fine-tune LLMs are still dependent on the base model's quality. Having a much higher quality base model is still a competitive advantage in scenarios where generalizability is an important a…

Consumers recognizing ChatGPT might just end up like vacuum cleaners; at least in the UK, people will often just call it a "hoover" but the likelihood of it being a Hoover is low.

It is difficult to see where the moat might exist if it's not data and the majority of the workings are published / discoverable. I don't think the document identifies a readily working strategy to defend against the threats it recognises.

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