ICYMI this is part of a year-end "OpenAI is..." series from a bunch of writers
https://sherwood.news/tech/what-companys-past-reveals-the-fu...
OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
31–40 of 171 posts
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#32Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its monopoly. Would be helpful to have some concrete examples of what it did and what OpenAI is trying to do. The point of the article sounds plausible, but doesn't really present any evidence to support it. Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has.
> Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has. I think this is misreading how literal the comparison is meant to be; Sherwood's running a bunch of "OpenAI is X" articles today. This is not about the massive duopoly which has been catastrophic for US payments, but about the way companies entrench themselves. > Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its m…
> I think this is misreading how literal the comparison is meant to be; Sherwood's running a bunch of "OpenAI is X" articles today.
This is ... a useful piece of information with which to update our credulity of the narrative these articles are trying to present.
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#33Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its monopoly. Would be helpful to have some concrete examples of what it did and what OpenAI is trying to do. The point of the article sounds plausible, but doesn't really present any evidence to support it. Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has.
> Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has.
They've been working very hard on getting one for at least a year though.
Every time Altman whines about the dangers of AI, he's lobbying for government regulation that would raise barriers to entry into the market.
And please no, god forbid there are any free solutions. Let's drown them in regulation worth a few hundred million per year.
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#34This is now impossible since the government (musk) is in war with openai. If that was the case, it's not anymore
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#35Doesn't explain what regulations Visa pushed for and got which helped it maintain its monopoly. Would be helpful to have some concrete examples of what it did and what OpenAI is trying to do. The point of the article sounds plausible, but doesn't really present any evidence to support it. Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has.
> Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has. They've been working very hard on getting one for at least a year though. Every time Altman whines about the dangers of AI, he's lobbying for government regulation that would raise barriers to entry into the market. And please no, god forbid there are any free solutions. Let's drown them in regulation worth a few hundred million per year.
All he’d have to do is get interest rates to rise 25bps and then poof, his competitors would evaporate.
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#36> What Visa did in response recently got it sued by the Justice Department, which accused Visa of using aggressive tactics with companies like CostcoCOST $956.14 (-0.29%) and AppleAAPL $258.99 (0.35%) to guarantee that a competitive payment network would not develop, The Wall Street Journal reported. I don't buy the reasoning as to how Visa built a moat. From the WSJ article linked in the article: >> Visa offered to…
Interesting that here in Europe I have never seen a store accept Visa or Mastercard exclusively.
Since neither company is above such tactics, I can only guess that it's a bit illegal.
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> thing with credit cards is that you can have more than one. I have a Visa and a Mastercard and when I shop at Costco I use Visa. I don't see this reason stopping someone wanting to compete as though if they can't get the Costco dollars, they have no product. I'm sorry, are we really saying that it's acceptable for the market to begin preferring one completely compatible payment network vs another? This is clearly a…
> No one should have to open an account with visa just to shop at a retailer. You know you have to pay just to enter Costco right? What's the difference if they want to force customers to use cash or Visa. Do you feel the same way about businesses that reject Discover? I really don't understand the outrage. > Ahhh, fearmongering about KYC. Know your customer is an obviously good regulation for banks to know the type…
> What's the difference if they want to force customers to use cash or Visa.
I'll leave the cash option aside because the provider of cash is the US treasury. But yes, I do think it is wrong for a merchant to only allow mastercard or visa or discover. I understand merchants not taking Amex because their fees are significantly higher on the merchant side, but discover, mastercard, and visa are all similar for the merchant. I work in payment processing for a multi billion dollar company and we gladly accept all of these card types. My issue is with visa providing Costco with a kickback, so that Costco then pressures you to have an account with visa. It should be totally fine if someone just happens to have only mastercard cards and wants to shop at costco. I'm against kickback schemes.
As for the AML/KYC ineffectiveness argument, I'm reading through that 2018 study now.
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#38Not much of a monopoly when they are being outcompeted by open source models done by companies with a fraction of OpenAIs resources. Sure - a government sanctioned monopoly might have been their fantasy but now it is getting obvious it is not the way things are going to go …
> by companies with a fraction of OpenAIs resources. Meta and Google are orders of magnitude greater than OpenAI and they're the only contenders that have challenged GPT models. > But what about Mistral et al? They are not even near GPT-4o. Good gpt-3.5-turbo alt tho.
But not even near X SOTA model doesn't matter to 99% of people because 99% of people don't need or care about the difference.
It's like sure Porsche / Ferrari makes a car that can hit insane top speeds really fast on a track, but 99% of people don't drive in such a manner where that matters. In that analogy though, everyday cars aren't free, so profit possibility is even less in OAI case than the supercar case
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#39This is now impossible since the government (musk) is in war with openai. If that was the case, it's not anymore
Yes, but Musk has his own AI company so it’s entirely reasonable to be concerned that he’ll try the same strategy. (No, I’m not particularly worried about X.ai, yes I think Musk absolutely would use his influence over the new administration to benefit himself.)
Re: OpenAI is Visa – Buttering up the government to retain a monopoly
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also OpenAI in no way has a monopoly of the kind that Visa/MC has. They've been working very hard on getting one for at least a year though. Every time Altman whines about the dangers of AI, he's lobbying for government regulation that would raise barriers to entry into the market. And please no, god forbid there are any free solutions. Let's drown them in regulation worth a few hundred million per year.
All he’d have to do is get interest rates to rise 25bps and then poof, his competitors would evaporate.
Saying we should replicate the Russian economy then?