OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by boringg » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:07 PM UTC

tracerbulletx wrote: post #106

stanford_labrat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chatgpt making targeted "recommendations" (read ads) is a nightmare. especially if it's subtle and not disclosed.

The end game is its a sales person and not only is it suggesting things to you undisclosed. It's using all of the emotional mechanisms that a sales person uses to get you to act.

100% end game - no way to finance all this AI development without ads sadly - % of sales isn't going to be enough - we will eventually get the natural enshittification of chatbots as with all things that go through these funding models.

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

#172

Post by clickety_clack » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

achow wrote: post #146

WSJ: Altman said OpenAI would be pushing back work on other initiatives, such as advertising, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant called Pulse. These plus working with Jony Ive on hardware, makes it sound like they took their eyes off the ball.

100%. Especially if it’s just ads and a new Siri/Alexa that they’ve got cooking.

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

#173

Post by croes » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

hodgehog11 wrote: post #117

TechRemarker wrote: post #84

Heard all the news how Gemini 3 is passing everyone on benchmarks, so quickly tested and still find it a far cry from ChatGPT in real world use when testing questions on both platforms. But importantly the ChatGPT app experience at least for iPhone/Mac users is drastically superior vs Google which feels very Google still. So Gemini would have to be drastically better answer wise than ChatGPT to lure users from a bett…

That's really fascinating. Every real world use case I've tried on Gemini (especially math-related) absolutely slaughtered the performance of ChatGPT in speed and quality, not even close. As an Android user, the Gemini app is also far superior, since the ChatGPT app still doesn't properly display math equations, among plenty of other bugs.

One might think that benchmarks do not say much about individual usage and that an objective assessment of the performance of AIs is difficult.

At least, thanks to the hype, RAM and SSDs are becoming more expensive, which eats up all the savings from using AI and the profits from increased productivity /s?

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

#174

Post by twothreeone » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

The way I've experienced "Code Red" is mostly as a euphemism for "on-going company-wide lack of focus" and a band-aid for mid-level management having absolutely no clue how to meaningfully make progress, upper management panicking, and ultimately putting engineers and ICs on the spot to bear the brunt of that organizational mess.

Interestingly enough, apart from Google, I've never seen an organization take the actual proper steps (fire mid-management and PMs) to prevent the same thing from happening again. Will be interesting to see how OAI handles this.

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

#175

Post by mrcwinn » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

A hardware device from OpenAI is exactly why I would prefer it over Anthropic or Google. Why give up on differentiation? I would assume the model team is separate from the consumer hardware team.

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

#176

Post by an0malous » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

cmiles8 wrote: post #136

The real code red here is less that Google just one-upped OpenAI but that they demonstrated there’s no moat to be had here. Absent a major breakthrough all the major providers are just going to keep leapfrogging each other in the most expensive race to the bottom of all time. Good for tech, but a horrible business and financial picture for these companies.

> for these companies

They’re absolutely going to get bailed out and socialize the losses somehow. They might just get a huge government contract instead of an explicit bailout, but they’ll weasel out of this one way or another and these huge circular deals are to ensure that.

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

#177

Post by mrcwinn » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

TechRemarker wrote: post #84

Heard all the news how Gemini 3 is passing everyone on benchmarks, so quickly tested and still find it a far cry from ChatGPT in real world use when testing questions on both platforms. But importantly the ChatGPT app experience at least for iPhone/Mac users is drastically superior vs Google which feels very Google still. So Gemini would have to be drastically better answer wise than ChatGPT to lure users from a bett…

This is exactly my experience. And it's funny -- this crowd is so skeptical of OpenAI... so they prefer _Google_ to not be evil? It's funny how heroes and villains are being re-cast.

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

#178

Post by aftbit » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #135

sometimes_all wrote: post #38

For regular consumers, Gemini's AI pro plan is a tough one to beat. The chat quality has gotten much better, I am able to share my plan with a couple more people in my family leading to proper individual chat histories, I get 2 TB of extra storage (which is also sharable), plus some really nice stuff like NotebookLM, which has been amazing for doing research. Veo/Nanobanana are nice bonuses. It's easily worth the mon…

If we stop for a while and really consider the value of AI tools, then comparing them on price doesn't make much sense. Any of these tools give hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of value per month to the user. With that in consideration they should mostly be compared on quality.

The same thing is true for a _ton_ of tech products. My home internet plan easily gives me more than $1000 in value per month. My cell phone hardware probably gives me $2000+ in value over even a short 2 year life. Customers still tend to choose the cheapest option that meets requirements.

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

#179

Post by sien » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:10 PM UTC

whiplash451 wrote: post #17

rappatic wrote: 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.

The bottleneck isn’t the people doing the work but the leadership’s bandwidth for strategic thinking

If only they had a tool that they claim could help with things like that....

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

#180

Post by vkou » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 8:10 PM UTC

twothreeone wrote: post #174

The way I've experienced "Code Red" is mostly as a euphemism for "on-going company-wide lack of focus" and a band-aid for mid-level management having absolutely no clue how to meaningfully make progress, upper management panicking, and ultimately putting engineers and ICs on the spot to bear the brunt of that organizational mess. Interestingly enough, apart from Google, I've never seen an organization take the actual…

This code red also has the convenient benefit of giving an excuse to stop work on more monetization features... Which, when implemented, would have the downside of tethering OpenAI's valuation to reality.