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Do AI companies work?

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Re: Do AI companies work?

#101

Post by martin_drapeau »

The fundamental question is how to monetize AI?

I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in

The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscription but long term will most likely become a commondity with advertising.

The second is tangible. My company is plugged directly to the OpenAI API. We build on it. Still very early and not so robust. But getting better and cheaper and faster over time. Active development. No reason to switch to something else as long as OpenAI leads the pack.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#102

Post by cgearhart »

llm_trw wrote: post #31

I've found that everything that works stops being called AI. Logic programming? AI until SQL came out. Now it's not AI. OCR, computer algebra systems, voice recognition, checkers, machine translation, go, natural language search. All solved, all not AI any more yet all were AI before they got solved by AI researchers. There's even a name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect?utm_source=perplex...

This is a pretty common perspective that was introduced to me as “shifting the goalposts” in school. I have always found it a disingenuous argument because it’s applied so narrowly.

Humans are intelligent + humans play go => playing go is intelligent

Humans are intelligent + humans do algebra => doing algebra is intelligent

Meanwhile, humans in general are pretty terrible at exact, instantaneous arithmetic. But we aren’t claiming that computers are intelligent because they’re great at it.

Building a machine that does a narrowly defined task better than a human is an achievement, but it’s not intelligence.

Although, in the case of LLMs, in context learning is the closest thing I’ve seen to breaking free from the single-purpose nature of traditional ML/AI systems. It’s been interesting to watch for the past couple years because I still don’t think they’re “intelligent”, but it’s not just because they’re one trick ponies anymore. (So maybe the goalposts really are shifting?) I can’t quite articulate yet what I think is missing from current AI to bridge the gap.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#103

Post by Scarblac »

cgearhart wrote: post #102
llm_trw wrote: post #31

I've found that everything that works stops being called AI. Logic programming? AI until SQL came out. Now it's not AI. OCR, computer algebra systems, voice recognition, checkers, machine translation, go, natural language search. All solved, all not AI any more yet all were AI before they got solved by AI researchers. There's even a name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect?utm_source=perplex...

This is a pretty common perspective that was introduced to me as “shifting the goalposts” in school. I have always found it a disingenuous argument because it’s applied so narrowly. Humans are intelligent + humans play go => playing go is intelligent Humans are intelligent + humans do algebra => doing algebra is intelligent Meanwhile, humans in general are pretty terrible at exact, instantaneous arithmetic. But we ar…

> Meanwhile, humans in general are pretty terrible at exact, instantaneous arithmetic. But we aren’t claiming that computers are intelligent because they’re great at it.

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra

Re: Do AI companies work?

#104

Post by foobiekr »

bhouston wrote: post #90

I think we are in the middle of a steep S-curve of technology innovation. It is far from plateauing and there are still a bunch of major innovations that are likely to shift things even further. Interesting time and these companies are riding a wild wave. It is likely some will actually win big, but most will die - similar to previous technology revolutions. The ones that win will win not just on technology, but on t…

In particular:

"There is, however, one enormous difference that I didn’t think about: You can’t build a cloud vendor overnight. Azure doesn’t have to worry about a few executives leaving and building a worldwide network of data centers in 18 months."

This isn't true at all. There are like 8 of these companies stood up in the last three or four years fueled by massive investment of sovereign funds - mostly the saudi, dubai, northern europe, etc. oil-derived funds - all spending billions of dollars doing exactly that and getting something done.

The real problem is the ROI on AI spending is.. pretty much zero. The commonly asserted use cases are the following:

Chatbots Developer tools RAG/search

Not a one of these is going to generate $10 of additional revenue per sollar spent, nor likely even $2. Optimizing your customer services representatives from 8 conversations at once to an average of 12 or 16 is going to save you a whopping $2 per hour per CSR. It just isn't huge money. And RAG has many, many issues with document permissions that make the current approaches bad for enterprises - where the money is - who as a group haven't spent much of anything to even make basic search work.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#105

Post by janoc »

The mistake in that article is the assumption that these companies collecting those gigantic VC funding rounds are looking to stay ahead of the pack and be there even 10 years down the road.

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of the (especially) US startup culture in the last maybe 10-20 years. Only very rarely is the goal of the founders and angel investors to build an actual sustainable business.

In most cases the goal is to build enough perceived value by wild growth financed by VC money & by fueling hype that an subsequent IPO will let the founders and initial investors recoup their investment + get some profit on top. Or, find someone to acquire the company before it reaches the end of its financial runway.

And then let the poor schmucks who bought the business hold the bag (and foot the bill). Nobody cares if the company becomes irrelevant or even goes under at that point anymore - everyone who did has has recouped their expense already. If the company stays afloat - great, that's a bonus but not required.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#107

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #101

The fundamental question is how to monetize AI? I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscri…

But OpenAI doesn’t lead the pack. How do you determine when to switch or when to just keep going with (potentially marginally) inferior product?

Re: Do AI companies work?

#109

Post by atomsatomsatoms »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #107
martin_drapeau wrote: post #101

The fundamental question is how to monetize AI? I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscri…

But OpenAI doesn’t lead the pack. How do you determine when to switch or when to just keep going with (potentially marginally) inferior product?

There would need to be significant capabilities that openai doesn't have or wouldn't be built on a short-ish timeline to have the enterprise switch. There's tons of bureaucratic work going on behind the scenes to approve a new vendor.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#110

Post by jfoster »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #101

The fundamental question is how to monetize AI? I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscri…

That's like saying "how do you monetize the internet?"

There are so many ways, it makes the question seem nonsensical.

Ways to monetize AI so far:

Metered APIs (OpenAI and others)

Subscription products built on it (Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.)

Using it as a feature to give products a competitive edge (Apple Intelligence, Tesla FSD)

Selling the hardware (Nvidia)

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