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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

#331

OpenAI is basically just Netscape at this point. An innovative product with no means of significant revenue generation. One one side it's up against large competitors with an already established user base and product line that can simply bundle their AI offerings into those products. Google will do just what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer and bundle Gemini in for 'Free' with their already other profitable produ…

> Google will do just what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer and bundle Gemini in for 'Free' with their already other profitable products and established ad-funded revenue streams.

“will do”? Is there any Google product they haven't done that with already?

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - If it works and prints money like it should, then OpenAI is on a path to become the next Mag 7 company. All the money they raised makes sense. Makes sense for whom? Certainly not the users. The entire purpose of ads is to change your behavior in ways that benefit someone else. In ad-based search, ads are at least visually separable (and blockable) but in a conversational AI they are indistinguishable and corrupt…

I like your attitude, but there is potentially a major business in there if they can get users to tolerate it. (Major business meaning greater than the GDP of most countries.) Over 75% of Google's revenue is ads. A bulk of that from Google Search ads. I just don't think the ads will be natural. And I think OpenAI has been testing this in quiet and is now "changing course" because the results didn't look great. Hypoth…

And yet, none of it is in/from Gemini. You'd think, if advertising in AI chatbots was feasible, wouldn't the world's biggest advertising company be the first to get there?

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

#334

I've seen a rumor going around that OpenAI hasn't had a successful pre-training run since mid 2024. This seemed insane to me but if you give ChatGPT 5.1 a query about current events and instruct it not to use the internet it will tell you its knowledge cutoff is June 2024. Not sure if maybe that's just the smaller model or what. But I don't think it's a good sign to get that from any frontier model today, that's 18 m…

Every so often I try out a GPT model for coding again, and manage to get tricked by the very sparse conversation style into thinking it's great for a couple of days (when it says nothing and then finishes producing code with a 'I did x, y and z' with no stupid 'you're absolutely' right sucking up and it works, it feels very good).

But I always realize it's just smoke and mirrors - the actual quality of the code and the failure modes and stuff are just so much worse than claude and gemini.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah- given all top AI models are more and more generalists, as time goes on there is less and less reason to use one over another.

It’s really even easier than that. I already do all my work on AWS and use Bedrock that hosts every popular model and its own except for OpenAIs closed source models. I have a reusable library that lets me choose between any of the models I choose to support or any new model in the same family that uses the same request format. Every project I’ve done, it’s a simple matter of changing a config setting and choosing a…

> Bedrock

This sounds so enterprise. I've been wanting to talk to people that actually use it.

Why use Bedrock instead of OpenRouter, Fal, etc.? Doesn't that tie you down to Amazon forever?

Isn't the API worse? Aren't the p95 latencies worse?

The costs higher?

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's generally anecdotal and vibes when people make claims that some AI is better than another for things they do. There are too many variables and not enough eval for any of it to hold water imo. Personal preferences, experience, brand loyalty, and bias at play too it's contemporary vim vs emacs at this point

I get what you're saying because this is typically true (this is a strong motivator for my current research) but I don't think it applies here and OpenAI seems to agree with me. Some cases are clear: GPT-5 is clearly better than Llama 3 for example. If there is a sizeable enough difference across virtually all evals, it is typically clear that one LLM is a stronger performer than another.

Experiences aside, Gemini 3 beats GPT-5 on enough evals that it seems fair to say that it is a better model. This appears in line with public consensus, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions seem to be centered around search.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fun trope to repeat but that's not what OpenAI is doing. I get a ton of value from ChatGPT and Codex from my subscription. As long as the inference is not done at a lost this analogy doesn't hold. They're not paying me to use it. They are generating output that is very valuable to me. Much more than my subscription cost. I've been able to help setup cross app automation for my partner's business, remodel my ho…

> They're not paying me to use it. Of course they are. > As long as the inference is not done at a loss. If making money on inference alone was possible, there would be a dozen different smaller providers who'd be taking the open weights models and offering that as service. But it seems that every provider is anchored at $20/month, so you can bet that none of them can go any lower.

> If making money on inference alone was possible

Maybe, but arguably a major reason you can't make money on inference right now is that the useful life of models is too short, so you can't amortize the development costs across much time because there is so much investment in the field that everyone is developing new models (shortening useful life in a competitive market) and everyone is simultaneously driving up the costs of inputs needed for developing models (increasing the costs that have to be amortized over the short useful life). Perversely, the AI bubble popping and resolving those issues may make profitability much easier for the survivors that have strong revenue streams.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but it is possible he can say whatever he wants without consequences to public because OAI is not a public company.

Kind of, but there are limits. The investors still have LPs who aren’t going to be happy if things get messy. Things can still get really ugly even for a private company.

The LPs are eyeing that $1 trillion IPO to dump on retail. They don't care what Sam says until then.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your attitude, but there is potentially a major business in there if they can get users to tolerate it. (Major business meaning greater than the GDP of most countries.) Over 75% of Google's revenue is ads. A bulk of that from Google Search ads. I just don't think the ads will be natural. And I think OpenAI has been testing this in quiet and is now "changing course" because the results didn't look great. Hypoth…

And yet, none of it is in/from Gemini. You'd think, if advertising in AI chatbots was feasible, wouldn't the world's biggest advertising company be the first to get there?

Google is almost always a follower. They weren't the first in search, smart phones, internet video, advertising, cloud, etc.

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

#340
The primary reason I have switched is that creative writing has plummeted on ChatGPT. It is overly eager to censor output that isn't adult but might vaguely be adult if taken incorrectly. This severely limits creative freedom. On the other hand, Gemini happily writes my stories.

I am not sure who OpenAI aims to please by nerfing their own product in this way. It can't be paying customers.

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