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OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

developers.openai.com

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Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#71

Post by lerchmo »

eigenspace wrote: post #9

The fact that AI models can be so easily distilled and replicated is such a stroke of luck. 10 or 15 years ago if one had asked me to envision a future where a private company invents artificial intelligence, I'd have thought for sure they'd have a massive moat, be very difficult to catch, and it would create an almost instant monopoly. Rather, it seems that selling intelligence might end up as a race to the bottom.…

The internet created lots of monopolies with network effects and economies of scale.a low margin commoditized business that still attracted a trillion dollars of investment to get off the ground was not how I envisioned it happening either.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#72

Post by InsideOutSanta »

colingauvin wrote: post #55
eigenspace wrote: post #9

The fact that AI models can be so easily distilled and replicated is such a stroke of luck. 10 or 15 years ago if one had asked me to envision a future where a private company invents artificial intelligence, I'd have thought for sure they'd have a massive moat, be very difficult to catch, and it would create an almost instant monopoly. Rather, it seems that selling intelligence might end up as a race to the bottom.…

Where is the actual evidence of distillation? I keep seeing this repeated ad nauseam but I must have somehow missed the evidence.

Musk confirmed in federal court that xAI does it: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/30/elon-musk-testifies-that-x...

It's also how providers build their smaller models out of their larger ones; they publicly talk about the process.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#73

Post by sleepgummies »

wasfgwp wrote: post #52
sleepgummies wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically saying you will switch from one evil to another because the other seems less evil for now. It's funny how people make these alignment comments while ignoring how misaligned the leadership at these companies are right form the get go and they just play mental gymnastics to deflect those facts when confronted with them.

I don’t think anyone said anything about either being less evil? Just having more consumer oriented products..

[dead]

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#75

Post by retinaros »

colingauvin wrote: post #55
eigenspace wrote: post #9

The fact that AI models can be so easily distilled and replicated is such a stroke of luck. 10 or 15 years ago if one had asked me to envision a future where a private company invents artificial intelligence, I'd have thought for sure they'd have a massive moat, be very difficult to catch, and it would create an almost instant monopoly. Rather, it seems that selling intelligence might end up as a race to the bottom.…

Where is the actual evidence of distillation? I keep seeing this repeated ad nauseam but I must have somehow missed the evidence.

there is no evidence. it shortcuts post training by a huge margin this is true. but that is all.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#76

Post by GMoromisato »

Rover222 wrote: post #41
eigenspace wrote: post #9

The fact that AI models can be so easily distilled and replicated is such a stroke of luck. 10 or 15 years ago if one had asked me to envision a future where a private company invents artificial intelligence, I'd have thought for sure they'd have a massive moat, be very difficult to catch, and it would create an almost instant monopoly. Rather, it seems that selling intelligence might end up as a race to the bottom.…

I think the only moat in the future will be the scale of hardware deployment. If one company is able to deploy an order of magnitude more silicon, they'll have a firm grip on a SOTA model and massive inference usage. China or SpaceX seem like the 2 likely candidates in 5 years, but who knows.

"Who knows" is the right answer, I think.

If (a) demand for AI continues to increase, and (b) SpaceX can get to ~$100/kg to orbit, then they will have a ridiculously deep moat. Probably more like 10 years, though.

But as you said, who knows.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#77

Post by rootusrootus »

Good timing. I'm not too happy having to pay MAX pricing to even access Fable, and I've had a couple situations where Fable missed things and GPT 5.6-Sol caught it. My needs are modest and I can get by on a $20 OpenAI subscription, so the odds are starting to look increasingly like I'm going to drop Anthropic altogether.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#78

Post by state_less »

eigenspace wrote: post #63
state_less wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before LLMs, ML folks were already aware that you can use a model to teach another model. I doubt this is something AI companies put at the top of their investor materials, but it's been nice to see it play out. That said, there are other moat factors like, a US company needing to use a US AI provider, sticky customers due to corporate onboarding friction, and others. Not nothing, but not as large a moat as some…

Yes, but 10 or 15 years ago, I would have thought that there'd be more to it than just a slight modification on the ideas behind a CNN to get this level of AI. There were somewhat good reasons to think it needed more than just this data-driven ML approach.

There's something startling about how (relatively) simple these networks are and yet how powerful they are. The main ingredient the AI darlings are using is vast amounts of compute and data. I don't want to take away anything from what the researchers came up with, but I suspect even they are surprised at how capable some of these models have become.

Re: OpenAI: GPT 5.6 Sol price reduction (until at least Nov 21)

#79

Post by Rover222 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #76
Rover222 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only moat in the future will be the scale of hardware deployment. If one company is able to deploy an order of magnitude more silicon, they'll have a firm grip on a SOTA model and massive inference usage. China or SpaceX seem like the 2 likely candidates in 5 years, but who knows.

"Who knows" is the right answer, I think. If (a) demand for AI continues to increase, and (b) SpaceX can get to ~$100/kg to orbit, then they will have a ridiculously deep moat. Probably more like 10 years, though. But as you said, who knows.

Yeah, very hard to predict the future at this point. But the Starship + Terrafab combo will be this type of order-of-magnitude-moat IF it works out. Big if.

If it doesn't work out, I think China's exponential terrestrial energy deployment will eventually give them the lead, IF they can get enough chips. Another big if.

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