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Evolving OpenAI's Structure

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Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#271

Post by directevolve »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #184
grey-area wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think you’re correct that they know the jig is up, but I would say they know the AI bubble is about to burst so they want to cash out before that happens. There is little to no money to be made in GAI, it will never turn into AGI, and people like Altman know this, so now they’re looking for a greater fool before it is too late.

AI companies are already automating huge swaths of document analysis, customer service. Doctors are straight up using ChatGPT to diagnose patients. I know it’s fun to imagine AI is some big scam like crypto, but you’d have to be ignoring a lot of genuine non hype economic movement at this point to assume GAI isn’t making any money. Why does the forum of an incubator that now has a portfolio that is like 80% AI so rou…

Doctors were using Google to diagnose patients before. The thing is, it's still the doctor delivering the diagnosis, the doctor writing the prescription, and the doctor billing insurance. Unless and until patients or hospitals are willing and legally able to use ChatGPT as a replacement for a doctor (unwise), ChatGPT is not about to eat any doctor's lunch.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#273

Post by patmcc »

wmf wrote: post #160
elAhmo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have seen how much power does the board have after the firing of Altman - none. Let's see how this plays out. PBC effectively means nothing - just take a look at Xai and its purchase of Twitter. I would love to listen reasoning explaining why this ~33 billion USD move is benefiting public.

ChatGPT is free. That's the public benefit.

Google offers a great many things for free. Should they get beneficial tax treatment for it?

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#274

Post by whynotminot »

sigilis wrote: post #244
whynotminot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Sam already very rich? I mean it wouldn’t be the first time a guy wanted to be even richer, but I feel like we need to be more creative when divining his intentions

Why would we need to be more creative? The explanation of him wanting more money is perfectly adequate. Being rich results in a kind of limitation of scope for ambition. To the sufferer, a person who has everything they could want, there is no other objective worth having. They become eccentric and they pursue more money. We should have enrichment facilities for these people where they play incremental games and don’…

> Why would we need to be more creative? The explanation of him wanting more money is perfectly adequate. Being rich results in a kind of limitation of scope for ambition.

The dude announces new initiatives from the White House, regularly briefs Senators and senior DoD leaders, and is the top get for interviews around the world for AI topics.

There’s a lot more to be ambitious about than just money.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#275

Post by ReptileMan »

paulddraper wrote: post #260
caseyy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doubtful if there even is a race anymore. The last significant AI advancement in the consumer LLM space was fluent human language synthesis around 2020, with its following assistant/chat interface. Since then, everything has been incremental — larger models, new ways to prompt them, cheaper ways to run them, more human feedback, and gaming evaluations. The wisest move in the chatbot business might be to wait and…

You saying —- with a straight face —- that post 2020 LLM AIs have made only incremental progress?

Yes. But they have also improved a lot. Incremental just means that the function is going up without breaking points. We haven't seen anything revolutionary, just evolutionary in the last 3 years. But the models do provide 2 or 3 times more value. So their pace of advancement is not slow.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#276

Post by sumeno »

edmundsauto wrote: post #230
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you that I could surpass that revenue if I started a business that would give people back $9 if they gave me $4. OpenAI models are already of the most expensive, they don’t have a lot of levers to pull.

There is a pretty significant different between “buy $9 for $4” and selling a service that costs $9 to build and run per year for $4 per year. Especially when some people think that service could be an absolute game changer for the species. It’s ok to not buy into the vision or think it’s impossible. But it’s a shallow dismissal to make the unnuanced comparison, especially when we’re talking about a brand new technol…

> When the iPhone first came out, it was too expensive, didn’t do enough, and many people thought it was a waste of apples time when they should be making music players.

This comparison is always used when people are trying to hype something. For every "iPhone" there are thousands of failures

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#277

Post by MPSFounder »

lolinder wrote: post #70

So the non-profit retains control but we all know that Altman controls the board of the non-profit and I'd be shocked if he won't have significant stock in the new for-profit (from TFA: "we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock"). Which means that regardless of whether the non-profit has control on paper, OpenAI is now even better structured for Sam Altman's personal enrichment. No more ca…

Never understood his appeal. Lacks charisma. Not technically savvy relative to many engineers at OpenAI(I doubt he would pass their own intern interviews, even less so their FT). Very unlikeable in person (comes off as fake for some reason, like a political plant). Who is vouching for this guy. When I met him, for some reason, he reminded me of Thiel. He is no Jobs

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#278

Post by ahtihn »

BosunoB wrote: post #226
mandevil wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't they spend $9 billion? If I have a machine that magically turns $9 billion of investor money into $4 billion in revenue, I need to have a pretty awesome story for how in the future I am going to be making enormous piles of money to pay back that investment. If it looks like frontier models are going to be a commodity and it is not going to be winner-take-all... that's a lot harder story to tell.

Most of that 9 billion was spent on training new models and on staff. If they stopped spending money on R&D, they would already be profitable.

> If they stopped spending money on R&D, they would already be profitable.

The news that they did that would make them lose most of their revenue pretty fast.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#279

Post by TrackerFF »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #143
jjani wrote: post #107

SamA is in a hurry because he's set to lose the race. We're at peak valuation and he needs to convert something now . If the entrenched giants (Google, Microsoft and Apple) catch up - and Google 100% has, if not surpassed - they have a thousand levers to pull and OpenAI is done for. Microsoft has realized this, hence why they're breaking up with them - Google and Anthropic have shown they don't need OpenAI. Galaxy ph…

ask 10 people on the street about chatgpt or gemini and see which one they know

On the other hand...If you asked, 5-6-7 years ago, 100 people which of the following they used:

Slack? Zoom? Teams?

I'm sure you'd get a somewhat uniform distribution.

Ask the same today, and I'd bet most will say Teams. Why Teams? Because it comes with office / windows, so that's what most people will use.

Same logic goes for the AI / language models...which one are people going to use? The ones that are provided as "batteries included" in whatever software or platform they use the most. And for the vast majority of regular people / workers, it is going to be something by microsoft / google / whatever.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#280

Post by patmcc »

wmf wrote: post #272
sekai wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't collect data?

If you use it, that means you received more value than you gave up. It's called consumer surplus.

That's effectively every business that isn't a complete rent-seeking monopoly. It's not a very good measure.

edit: to be clear, it's not a bad thing - we should want companies that create consumer surplus. But that's the default state of companies in a healthy market.

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