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Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

theatlantic.com

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Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#71

Post by noduerme »

qmr wrote: post #30
bilekas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's calling him out on his BS. That might work for mindless investors who want number go up. But he's actively making the world worse for people. Nevermind hoarding 40% of the worlds silicone 'just because'. It's like Musk's lofty and outright BS claims. "Well I'm rich so I can do and say what I like, give me your money". When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? Edit.. Im keeping silicone in there.

silicon*

It was 40% more fun the first way you wrote it ;)

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#72

Post by sjaiisba »

rustyhancock wrote: post #44
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I knew OpenAI was in trouble the instant they chose Altman over Ilya Sutskever. I am not so sure: This decision rather tells something important about the priorities of the string-pullers behind the curtain: They clearly want(ed) to monetize what is there, with the risk that only smaller improvements for the AI models will happen from OpenAI, and thus OpenAI might get outcompeted by competitors who are capable of b…

Yes I agree. Altman was the rational choice if you realise that eventually the huge R&D bill will need to stop for atleast a moderate period ( You want to ride that out before capitalising on the eventual cheaper training costs once the rug has been pulled. Altman has already succeeded here as it seems inference for API and chat is profitable but offset with massive R&D costs.

All your competitors benefit from your training costs. They’ll lose on inference pretty quickly if they stop training new models, no?

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#73

Post by mrweasel »

rustyhancock wrote: post #41
mrweasel wrote: post #9

To some extend I think people are putting way to much weight on his exact words, and not why he says them. Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies, so now he starts slinging random arguments that can't stand up to even the briefest of scrutiny. OpenAI is burning cash and fuel. There are results, and they are, to some extend, impressive, but not impressive enough to justify the cost and Altman are no longer…

My understanding is that subscription based inference and API usage is now profitable. Subscriptions are highly profitable for the typical chat user. And API is overall net profitable. What is extremely taxing to their finances is R&D, training and in particular development of frontier models. My assessment is that when the music stops those who have the most subs will win. Companies like Apple who had sat out the ba…

It probably doesn't matter that subscriptions are profitable, when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%.

I sort of agree with you, not that it's the most subscriptions necessarily that will be the deciding factor, but the there's going to be some companies better positioned to survive when the free money stops. OpenAI has the brand, so that might help, but mostly I think they'll get absorbed into Microsoft. I don't think they can stand on their own. It doesn't seem like a particularly well managed company, so to me it makes more sense that they are simply acquired for pennies on the dollar by someone with better leadership.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#75

Post by shalmanese »

absynth wrote: post #26

I have a different perspective. You'll probably hate it. AI data centers should be operated according to two limiting factors. 1) No energy from grid. Can't use coal or fossil fuel energy sources. Must have plan to provide excess TO grid. 2) No use of fresh water from municipal or fresh groundwater for cooling. Can use waste water. Must transition to providing excess fresh water to common supply. No loopholes. Massiv…

Sure, if we’re in the business of making arbitrary requests, how about every data center operator has to bring 1 Epstein accused to justice for every data center they’re allowed to build?

The hard part has never been the “what”, it’s always been the “how”.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#76

Post by [deleted] »

rkomorn wrote: post #21
bilekas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's calling him out on his BS. That might work for mindless investors who want number go up. But he's actively making the world worse for people. Nevermind hoarding 40% of the worlds silicone 'just because'. It's like Musk's lofty and outright BS claims. "Well I'm rich so I can do and say what I like, give me your money". When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? Edit.. Im keeping silicone in there.

But... what are they going to do with all that silicone?

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#77

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #73
rustyhancock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that subscription based inference and API usage is now profitable. Subscriptions are highly profitable for the typical chat user. And API is overall net profitable. What is extremely taxing to their finances is R&D, training and in particular development of frontier models. My assessment is that when the music stops those who have the most subs will win. Companies like Apple who had sat out the ba…

It probably doesn't matter that subscriptions are profitable, when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%. I sort of agree with you, not that it's the most subscriptions necessarily that will be the deciding factor, but the there's going to be some companies better positioned to survive when the free money stops. OpenAI has the brand, so that might help, but mostly I think they'll get absorbed…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#78

Post by rustyhancock »

sjaiisba wrote: post #72
rustyhancock wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree. Altman was the rational choice if you realise that eventually the huge R&D bill will need to stop for atleast a moderate period ( You want to ride that out before capitalising on the eventual cheaper training costs once the rug has been pulled. Altman has already succeeded here as it seems inference for API and chat is profitable but offset with massive R&D costs.

All your competitors benefit from your training costs. They’ll lose on inference pretty quickly if they stop training new models, no?

I don't think they will lose on inference because that assumes that compute becomes cheap for all evenly.

Their spending today has secured their compute for the near future.

If every GPU, stick for RAM and SSD is already paid for. Who can afford to sell cheap inference?

Z.ai is trying to deal with this by using domestic (basically Huwawei silicon not Nvidia). And with their state subsidy they will do well.

Anthropic has a 50bn USD plan to build data centres for 2026.

OpenAI similarly has secured extraordinary amounts of other people's money for data centres.

All these will be sunk costs and "other people's money" while money is easy to get hold off. But will be a moat when R&D ends.

Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI), and who you end up with (say people who use Gemini because they have a Google 2TB account).

Some upstart can put themselves into the ground borrowing compute and selling at a loss but the moment they catch up and need to raise prices everyone will simply leave.

ChatGPT is what is most likely to remain a sustained frontier model. Maybe Claude jumps ahead further a few times, Gemini will have its moment. But it'll all be a wash with ChatGPT tittering along as rarely the best. But never the worst.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#79

Post by rustyhancock »

mrweasel wrote: post #73
rustyhancock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that subscription based inference and API usage is now profitable. Subscriptions are highly profitable for the typical chat user. And API is overall net profitable. What is extremely taxing to their finances is R&D, training and in particular development of frontier models. My assessment is that when the music stops those who have the most subs will win. Companies like Apple who had sat out the ba…

It probably doesn't matter that subscriptions are profitable, when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%. I sort of agree with you, not that it's the most subscriptions necessarily that will be the deciding factor, but the there's going to be some companies better positioned to survive when the free money stops. OpenAI has the brand, so that might help, but mostly I think they'll get absorbed…

> when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%.

It's certainly almost everyone today, but that's because enshitificarion has yet to start properly.

The risk to OpenAI is that their free tier are captured by the tack on markets (i.e. Gemini with 2TB of cloud storage).

But otherwise they will make free more annoying until people just buy the cheap tier and then move up from there. Like chatgpt Go.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#80

Post by roxolotl »

xnx wrote: post #64
absynth wrote: post #26

I have a different perspective. You'll probably hate it. AI data centers should be operated according to two limiting factors. 1) No energy from grid. Can't use coal or fossil fuel energy sources. Must have plan to provide excess TO grid. 2) No use of fresh water from municipal or fresh groundwater for cooling. Can use waste water. Must transition to providing excess fresh water to common supply. No loopholes. Massiv…

Good rules. How about we apply them to alfalfa farms (that send their water to Saudi Arabia) or football stadiums (I don't like football)? The point is, I don't see the logic in singling out data centers over anything else.

It’s an article about data centers so we’re talking about data centers. 100% agree we should be pushing all industries to use their resources not those of the commons. Data centers do happen to be easier to mostly close loop though than alfalfa farms. Football stadiums on the other hand 100% should be.
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