Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. This is pretty much obvious just from the valuations. The wild bull case where they invent a revolutionary superintelligence would clearly value them in the trillions, so the fact that they're presently valued an order of magnitude less implies that it is viewed as an unlikely scenario (and reasonably so, in my opinion).
You don't need science fiction to find the bull case for OpenAI. You just have to think it stands to be the "next" Google, which feels increasingly plausible. Google's current market capitalization is in the trillions.
OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
341–350 of 443 posts
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. I mean, what exactly do you see happening? The have a product people love and practically incalculable upside potential. They may or may not end up the winners, but I see no scenario in which it "doesn't end well". It's already "well", even if the company went defunct tomorrow. > that clause with that timeline seems a bit risky. I'm 99% certain that OpenAI drove the terms…
They took money from ARKK and SoftBank this round which suggests that there were a lot of funds passing.
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#343Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#344There's no chance in the world they are worth even a tenth of it. Like literally some of their best talent tomorrow starts their own company and all they need is data center credits to catch up with open ai itself. What is the company's moat exactly? Being few months at best ahead of the curve (and only on specific benchmarks)?
It started with "AI progress is fake." "AI will never beat human creativity." "AI can't code anything past 15k tokens." "AI will always be too expensive." "AI will never sound like a human." "AI can't even understand humor."
And now we're at "AI is only like this because they're stealing copyright." "If everyone uses AI, it will cannibalize its own outputs." "Other people can build LLMs too."
But year after year, they solve these problems. They weren't worth a hundredth of it in 2021. At this rate, they would be worth a tenth of it in 2026, and maybe a oneth of it in 2030. And that's what the VCs are backing on. If they're not, well, it converts to debt.
Google (the search engine) hasn't really had a moat either. Plenty of competitors, some better ones, but they're still around. ChatGPT is a brand name.
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#345$157B marketcap means they need to 20x their current revenue of roughly 400 million dollars by next year... But the revenue has flatlined and you can't raise your existing users cost by 20x... It truly is a mystery as to how anybody throwing other peoples money hopes to get it back from OpenAI
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IAmNotLeftHanded
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#346I'm surprised there isn't more concern for OpenAI in that open source / open weight models are fast catching up to the plateau that OpenAI is at. Include edge AI models, ie tiny models that fit in apps/extensions etc and you have a LOT of nearly free competition coming for OpenAI.
It's like watching Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson boxing - they're the most agile large company we've ever seen and they're able to do it on a heavyweight platform.
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#347$6.6B raise. The company loses $5B per year. So all this money literally gives them just an extra ~year and change of runway. I know the AI hype is sky high at the moment (hence the crazy valuation), but if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. Another interesting part: > Under the terms of the new investment round, OpenAI has two years to transform into a for-pro…
Research and safety have to take a backseat for cost reduction. I mean there are many avenues to profitability for them, one I can think of is they could cut their cost significantly by creating smaller and smaller models that match or nearly match Gpt4, while paid subscribers wouldn't be able to really tell the difference. No one is really challenging them on their benchmark claims.
I think their main challenge is that in 5-10 years from now, if their current definition of AGI is still elusive, models of Gpt4 capabilities or similar (Llama 3 can fool most people I think) will be running locally and freely on pretty much any OS of choice without having to make a single outside API call. Every app will have access to local inference that neither costs developers nor the users anything to use. Especially after the novelty has worn off a bit, it's hard to see consumers or developers paying up to use something that's technically better but not significantly enough to justify a $20+/mo subscription or per token cost. Right now though, local inference has a huge barrier of entry, especially when you think across platforms.
Honestly, I think Google and Apple can afford to spend the cash to develop these models in perpetuity, while OpenAi needs to worry about massive revenue growth for the next few years, and they probably don't really have the personnel to grow revenue aggressively either. It's a research lab. The downside of revenue seeking too, is that sometimes the pursuit kills the product.
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#348Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
I currently can ask gpt4 to do a high school intelligence level task for me (financial data capture) so the issue?
For one thing high school is a level of education not a "intelligence level". For another thing there is not a single google search result for the phrase "high school intelligence level task". Unless Google is malfunctioning it seems you are just making things up?
I don't think this wording is something that needs to be analysed to death, after all someone will just move the goalposts (typically by those who want to place human intelligence on some podium as special).
This is a task I'd entrust a high school student to do (emphasis on student). They said high school intelligence not high school education.
Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B
#350$6.6B raise. The company loses $5B per year. So all this money literally gives them just an extra ~year and change of runway. I know the AI hype is sky high at the moment (hence the crazy valuation), but if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. Another interesting part: > Under the terms of the new investment round, OpenAI has two years to transform into a for-pro…
I think OpenAi will drop their ambition for AGI and focus on product, they'll never state this of course, but it's clearly telegraphed in this for profit move. Research and safety have to take a backseat for cost reduction. I mean there are many avenues to profitability for them, one I can think of is they could cut their cost significantly by creating smaller and smaller models that match or nearly match Gpt4, while…
> models of Gpt4 capabilities or similar
I took Apple how many years to change their bass config memory from 8 GB to 16? Somewhere between 8 and 10..
Regardless, I’m not sure running reasonably advanced models locally will necessarily become that common anytime soon on mainstream devices. $20 per month isn’t that much compared to the much higher HW costs, of course it’s not obvious that OpenAI/etc. can make any money longterm by charging that.