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OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

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Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#51

There will be a daily call for those tasked with improving the chatbot, the memo said, and Altman encouraged temporary team transfers to speed up development. Truly brilliant software development management going on here. Daily update meetings and temporary staff transfers. Well known strategies for increasing velocity!

Its easy to dismiss it but what would you do instead?

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#52
post #23

To be honest, this is the first month in almost a year when I didn't pay for ChatGPT Pro and instead went for Gemini Ultra. It's still not there for programming, where I use Claude Max, but for my 'daily driver' (count this, advice on that, 'is this cancer or just a headache' kind of thing), Gemini has finally surpassed ChatGPT for me. And I used to consider it to be the worst of the bunch. I used to consider Gemini…

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Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#53
post #12

I take this code red as a red flag. Open AI should continue to concern itself with where it will be 5 years from now, not lose sight over concern about where it will 5 months from now.

open ai is at risk of complete collapse if it cannot fulfill its financial obligations. if people willing to give them money don't have faith in their ability to win the AI race anymore, then they're going out of business.

Exactly. They aren't going to win the AI race chasing rabbits at the expense of long-term goals. We're 3 years into a 10 year build-out. Open AI and it's financiers are too impatient, clearly, and they're fucking themselves. Open AI doesn't need to double it's revenue to meet expectations. They need to 50x their revenue to meet expectations. That's not the kind of problem you solve by working through the weekend.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#54
post #39

> There will be a daily call for those tasked with improving the chatbot, the memo said, and Altman encouraged temporary team transfers to speed up development. It's incredible how 50 year-old advice from The Mythical Man-Month are still not being heed. Throw in a knee-jerk solution of "daily call" (sound familiar?) for those involved while they are wading knee-deep through work and you have a perfect storm of terrib…

Wait, shouldn't their internal agents be able to do all this work by now?

They have a stated goal of an AI researcher for 2028. Several years away.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#55
post #12

I take this code red as a red flag. Open AI should continue to concern itself with where it will be 5 years from now, not lose sight over concern about where it will 5 months from now.

Back in the day before Adobe bought Macromedia, there was a constant back and forth between Illustrator and Freehand where each release would better the competitor at least until the competitor's next release. Does anyone in AI think about 5 years from now?

Google is well positioned because they were thinking about AI from the earliest days. The race not a sprint, it just seems that way.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#56
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho it just shows how relatively simple this technology really is, and nobody will have a moat. The bubble will pop.

amazing how the bubble pops either from the technology either being too simple or being too complex to make a profit

The technology is simple, but you need a ton of hardware. So you lose either because there's lots of competition or you lose because your hardware costs can't be recuperated.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#57

IMHO Gemini surpassed ChatGPT by quite a bit - I switched. Gemini is faster, the thinking mode gives me reliably better answers and it has a more "business like" conversation attitude which is refreshing in comparison to the over-the-top informal ChatGPT default.

Is there a replacement for ChatGPT projects in Gemini yet?

That's the only ChatGPT feature keeping me from moving to Gemini. Specifically, the ability to upload files and automatically make them available as context for a prompt.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#58
post #35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho it just shows how relatively simple this technology really is, and nobody will have a moat. The bubble will pop.

Not exactly. Infra will win the race. In this aspect, Google is miles ahead of the competition. Their DC solutions scale very well. Their only risk is that the hardware and low level software stack is EXTREMELY custom. They don't even fully leverage OCP. Having said that, this has never been a major problem for Google over their 20+ years of moving away from OTS parts.

But anyone with enough money can make infra. Maybe not at the scale of Google, but maybe that's not necessary (unless you have a continuous stream of fresh high-quality training data).

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#59
post #5

> the company will be delaying initiatives like ads, shopping and health agents, and a personal assistant, Pulse, to focus on improving ChatGPT There's maybe like a few hundred people in the industry who can truly do original work on fundamentally improving a bleeding-edge LLM like ChatGPT, and a whole bunch of people who can do work on ads and shopping. One doesn't seem to get in the way of the other.

Far be it from me to backseat drive for Sam Altman, but is the problem really that the core product needs improvement, or that it needs a better ecosystem? I can't imagine people are choosing they're chatbots based on providing the perfect answers, it's what you can do with it. I would assume google has the advantage because it's built into a tool people already use every day, not because it's nominally "better" at g…

If that was the case, MS would be on top given how entrenched Windows, Office and Outlook are.

Re: OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

#60
post #37

OpenAI was founded to hedge against Google dominating AI and with it the future. It makes me sad how that was lost for pipe dreams (AGI) and terrible leadership. I fear a Google dystopia. I hope DeepSeek or somebody else will counter-balance their power.

That goal has wildly succeeded -- there are now several well financed companies competing against Google. The goal was supposed to be an ethical competitor as implied by the word "Open" in their name. When Meta and the Chinese are the most ethical of the competitors, you know we're in a bad spot...

I said DeepSeek because they are very open (not just weights). A young company and very much unlike Chinese Big Tech and American Big Tech.
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