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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

#911
post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting Waymo isn't deep software? Or Tensorflow? Or Android? The Go programming language? Or MapReduce, AlphaGo, Kubernetes, the transformer, Chrome/Chromium or Gvisor? You must have an amazing CV to think these are shallow projects.

No, I just realize these for what they are - reasonable projects at the exploitation (rather than exploration) stage of any industry. I’d say I have an average CV in the EECS world, but also relatively humble perspective of what is and isn’t bleeding edge. And as the industry expands, the volume „inside” the bleeding edge is exploitation, while the surface is the exploration. Waymo? Maybe; but that’s acquisition and…

> No, I just realize these for what they are - reasonable projects at the exploitation (rather than exploration) stage of any industry.

I get that bashing on Google is fun, but TensorFlow was the FIRST modern end-user ML library. JAX, an optimizing backend for it, is in its own league even today. The damn thing is almost ten years old already!

Waymo is literally the only truly publicly available robotaxi company. I don't know where you get the idea that it's an acquisition; it's the spun-off incarnation of the Google self-driving car project that for years was the butt of "haha, software engineers think they're real engineers" jokes. Again, more than a decade of development on this.

Kubernetes is a refinement of Borg, which Google was using to do containerized workloads all the way back in 2003! How's that not a deep project?

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

#912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation over here. Multiple family members only know chatgpt / think that chatgpt knows them and have never heard of the competitors.

[flagged]

Please don't comment like this on HN. We're trying for something better here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#913
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell a product, not a model. ChatGPT is a product, GPT5 is a technology. If you hope that ChatGPT will be worthless because the underlying technology will commodify, then you are naive and will be disappointed. If that logic made sense, why has it never happened before? Servers and computers have been commodified for decades! Salesforce is just a database, social media is just a relational database, Uber is just…

The underlying technology already is commodified - there are many, many other models that are extremely competitive. The problem is: suppose Google has an equivalent model (they do, but if you disagree, just pretend). Suppose they do. What then is OpenAI offering that makes its product more intriguing? Nothing. They have a chat interface. An intern can make a chat interface. > ChatGPT is the fifth most visited websit…

ChatGPT is not a model, it is a product. My credit card charges me for ChatGPT, not GPT5. Products have moats because once you solve the problem and become a habit, consumers never switch. Nobody switches from Google, nobody switches from Instagram, nobody switches from AWS to whatever godforsaken hertzner self hosted solution hackernews says is cheaper than the cloud.

Nobody wants the same thing but cheaper, or the same thing but marginally better. You either solve the problem first, or you lose. The first site to ever threaten the dominance of google.com is chatgpt.com! Why? Because it’s NOT just “google but better”, it’s an entirely new thing.

> To me, this is absolutely worthless information. That DOES NOT mean that ChatGPT is in the clear and nobody else will overtake them

Do you think chatgpt.com will be worse the 5th most visited website 5 years from now? I’ll gladly take that bet, let’s do $100, i’ll even give you 2:1 odds. Do you think openAI will be bankrupt in Chatgpt.com alone is clearly at least as valuable as instagram.com, soon to be as valuable as google.com, and long term more than either.

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

#914

The current situation of OpenAI is difficult. At present time, even the giants (Meta, MS, Apple, AMZN) with deep pockets would find it extremely challenging to compete against Google in the AI race, let alone a VC-funded startup. •Google has data, a lot of private data actually (YT, Gmail, Workspace, Search Queries.. you name it) •Google has a lot of money •Google has top-talented AI engineers (Eying on DeepMind & De…

TIL the phrase remontada -- thank you :)

Slang term for comeback

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

#915
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People could trivially switch their search engine to Bing or Yahoo, but they don't. If ads are so overpriced, how big is your short position on google? Also ads are extremely inefficient in terms of conversion. Ads rendered by an intelligent, personalized system will be OOM more efficient, negating most of the "overvalue". I'm not saying they should serve ads. It's a terrible strategy for other reasons.

> People could trivially switch their search engine to Bing or Yahoo, but they don't. Well those are obviously worse products. > If ads are so overpriced, how big is your short position on google? I hate hearing this stupid, stupid line. Most companies are run by neanderthals with more money than brains. Companies burn money on advertising because why not? Making your product better is hard and takes time, advertisin…

Do you think consumer brands lose money when they pay Google to do advertising? Do you think digital ads have a negative ROI for the brands that buy them? If so, why do they keep buying more? Wouldn’t they lose to more efficient companies?

I think you underestimate how valuable being the top slot on google is. Just the other day i googled “bluetooth speaker” and bought the first result (an ad). One hour of that can net you millions of dollars. That’s why consumer brands bid more and more every year on digital advertising.

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

#916

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.

Honest question: What could a hardware device do that your phone can't do already?

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

#917
post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor difference : YT does not cost literally a human trip to Mars and back to operate

It also didn't generate billions in income before even adding ads^1, nor grow anywhere near as quickly. ChatGPT is larger on most axes. YouTube was ambitious for its time. "In 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet had in 2000" but they weren't believed to start breaking even until 2015. ^1 and free users are a large majority!

Whether it "generated billions" is a wrong angle to look at this. What is relevant is the relation between the spend, or the committed spend and the income. I don´t believe that YT at any point committed to investing literally 1000x of its yearly revenue into a partner company, nor do I remember its CEO using made up words such as "annualised revenue" that keep being spat out by both OpenAI and Antropic CEOs, in the sense of "projecting the max monthly revenue as annual and fooling the investors".

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

#918
post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point you are now forced to use the "AI"s as code search tools--and it annoys me to no end. The problem is that the "AI"s can cough up code examples based upon proprietary codebases that you, as an individual, have no access to. That creates a significant quality differential between coders who only use publicly available search (Google, Github, etc.) vs those who use "AI" systems.

How would the AIs have access to proprietary codebases?

Microsoft owns github

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

#919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users aren't paying for Google or Facebook either. Advertisers do.

Right, again, even if you take every advertiser in the world and shove them in a dungeon and then point a cannon at them and say "give me all the money you have", you won't even have 1/10th the money you need. Everyone is vastly, vastly overestimating advertising. Advertising is a side hustle, because the product is the main hustle.

Yet Google built an empire on advertising money alone, and Facebook became one of the biggest company in the world on that business as well.

I think your are the one vastly underestimate advertising.

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

#920
The first models were really bad, but the new models are very good—both text and image. They were able to clean up the embarrassing start and catch up. It's very interesting/scary that a giant corporation can develop things that new startups generated and deliver an alternative product on par with them.
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