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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”

#61

Post by r00fus »

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #41
minimaxir wrote: post #37

Having enough scale to perpetually offer free/low-cost compute is a moat. The primary reason ChatGPT went viral in the first place was because it was free, with no restrictions. Back in 2019, GPT-2 1.5B was made freely accessible by a single developer via the TalkToTransformers website, which was the very first time many people talking about AI text generation...then the owner got hit with sticker shock from the GPU…

Charity is only a moat if it’s not profitable.

There's "immediately profitable" and "eventually profitable". Vast compute scale allows collection of customer generated data so the latter is possible, AI as of yet is not the former.

So GP point still stands. FAAMG can run much larger immediate deficits in order to corner the market on the eventual profitability of AI.

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

#64

Post by Hippocrates »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #27

I disagree with this. It's too expensive to train high quality models. For example I don't see how anyone would make an open-source GPT4 unless OpenAI leaks their model to the public.

ELI5 How is it too expensive? I know ChatGPT was expensive to train but Vicuna-13b is said to have cost $300 to train [https://lmsys.org/blog/2023-03-30-vicuna/]

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

#66

Post by simonw »

vlaaad wrote: post #45

This looks very fake to me. I might be wrong. Yet, there is no "document" that was leaked, the original source is some blog post. If there is a document, share the document. Shared by "anonymous individual on discord who granted permission for republication"... I don't know. If it was shared by anonymous, why ask for permission? Which discord server?

Did you read it?

I honestly don't care if it's really a leak from inside Google or not: I think the analysis stands on its own. It's a genuinely insightful summary of the last few months of activity in open source models, and makes a very compelling argument as to the strategic impact those will have on the incumbent LLM providers.

I don't think it's a leak though, purely because I have trouble imagining anyone writing something this good and deciding NOT to take credit for the analysis themselves.

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

#67

Post by lysecret »

So I use ChatGPT every day. I like it a lot and it is useful but it is overhyped. Also from 3.5 to 4 the jump was nice but seemed relatively marginal to me.

I think the head start OpenAi has will vanish. Iteration will be slow and painful giving google or whoever more than enough time to catch up.

ChatGPT was a fantastic leap getting us say 80% to Agi but as we have seen time and time again the last 20% are excruciatingly slow and painful (see Self driving cars).

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

#68

Post by deelowe »

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #41
minimaxir wrote: post #37

Having enough scale to perpetually offer free/low-cost compute is a moat. The primary reason ChatGPT went viral in the first place was because it was free, with no restrictions. Back in 2019, GPT-2 1.5B was made freely accessible by a single developer via the TalkToTransformers website, which was the very first time many people talking about AI text generation...then the owner got hit with sticker shock from the GPU…

Charity is only a moat if it’s not profitable.

It seems the plan is to be a loss leader until scale is sufficient to reach near AGI levels of capability.

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

#69

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> in a context where the average consumer is starting to recognize ChatGPT as a brand name.

That brand recognition could hurt them, though. If the widespread use of LLMs results in severe economic disruption due to unemployment, ChatGPT (and therefore OpenAI) will get the majority of the ire even for the effects of their competition.

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

#70

Post by Tostino »

r00fus wrote: post #61
FemmeAndroid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is only a moat if it’s not profitable.

There's "immediately profitable" and "eventually profitable". Vast compute scale allows collection of customer generated data so the latter is possible, AI as of yet is not the former. So GP point still stands. FAAMG can run much larger immediate deficits in order to corner the market on the eventual profitability of AI.

The amount of valuable data generated from professionals using these services to work through their problems and find solutions to industry problems is immense. It essentially gives these companies the keys to automating many industries by just...letting people try and make their jobs easier and collecting all data.
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