OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#111

Post by shermantanktop » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #95

throwup238 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems with central planning that capitalism ostensibly solves don't exist because of a lack of intelligence, but due to the impedance mismatch between the planner and the people. Making the central planner an AGI would just make it worse, because there's no guarantee that just because it's (super)intelligent it can empathize with its wards and optimize for their needs and desires.

I don't think the concern is that an AGI would become a central planner, but that an AGI would be so much better than human investors that the entire VC class would be outclassed, and that the free market would shift towards using AGI to make investment/capital allocation decisions. Which, of course, runs the risk of turning the whole system into a paperclip optimizing machine that consumes the planet in pursuit of p…

That VC class appears to really enjoy the frisson of bullshit, elaborate games of guess-what’s-behind-the-curtain, and status posturing. Remove that hedonistic factor and the optimization is likely to be much more effective.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#112

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #79

jsheard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, Sam's bulletproof plan is to build AGI (how hard could it be) and then ask the AGI how they can make a return on their investments. https://www.threads.net/@nixcraft/post/C5vj0naNlEq If they haven't built AGI yet that just means you should give them more billions so they can build the AGI. You wouldn't want your earlier investments to go to waste, right?

How old is that though? They seem to be making revenue pretty well now, so I suspect this might be quite old?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#113

Post by blackhawkC17 » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

throwup238 wrote: post #14

> The new fund-raising round, led by the investment firm Thrive Capital, values OpenAI at $157 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. Microsoft, the chipmaker Nvidia, the tech conglomerate SoftBank, the United Arab Emirates investment firm MGX and others are also putting money into OpenAI. Yeah, that bodes well. Led by Jared Kushner's brother's VC firm with the UAE's sovereign wealth fund and So…

[flagged]

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#114

Post by changing1999 » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:32 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #90

mcast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is Tesla had a moat with the electric car market, there were no affordable and practical EVs 10 years ago. OpenAI is surrounded by competition and Meta is constantly releasing Llama weights to break up any closed source monopolies.

The Nissan Leaf was far more affordable than a Tesla 10 years ago and very practical for anyone living in a city.

While it was an affordable vehicle, saying that it was practical is an overstatement. Charging networks were abysmal and actually still are for non-Tesla compatible vehicles. If you had experience using EVgo and similar small networks you probably wouldn't sound as confident.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#115

Post by gsky » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:33 PM UTC

as a geniune user (not robot) i could not create an account with OpenAI even after solving their puzzles 100 times.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#116

Post by xvector » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:34 PM UTC

flunhat wrote: post #102

xvector wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone in the thread has used o1 or the real-time voice tools, it's pretty clear AGI is here already, so we are really talking about ASI. You have no option but to trust an ASI as it is all-powerful by definition. If you don't trust ASI, your only option is to prevent it from existing to begin with. Edit: please note that AGI ≠ "human intelligence," just a general intelligence (that may exceed humans in some areas…

> please note that AGI ≠ "human intelligence," just a general intelligence (that may exceed humans in some areas and fall behind in others.) By this definition a calculator would be an AGI. (Behold -- a man!)

Meh, what I've seen is that we continually move the goalposts for AGI, and even GTP-3.5 would have been considered AGI by our standards from just 5 years ago.

But if I can't convince you, maybe Norvig can: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-...

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#117

Post by shermantanktop » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:36 PM UTC

canada_dry wrote: post #72

Someone1234 wrote: post #31

I hope better competition appear before the enshittification begins. As far as I understand it they're actually underwater on their API and even $20/month pricing, so we'll either see prices aggressively increase and or additional revenue streams like ads or product placement in results. We've witnessed that every time a company's valuation is impossibly high: They do anything they can to improve outlook in an attemp…

> the enshittification I've assumed that when AI becomes much more mainstream we'll see multiple levels of services. The cheapest (free or cash strapped services) will implement several (hidden/opaque) ways to reduce the cost of answering a query by limiting the depth and breadth of its analysis. Not knowing any better you likely won't realize that a much more complete, thoroughly considered answer was even available…

Or an answer that left out the fact that Pepperidge Farm remembers, Coke is life, and yo queiro Taco Bell.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#118

Post by shermantanktop » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

smlacy wrote: post #85

janandonly wrote: post #5

ChatGPT is valued $157BN? What discount rate do you use on a cash burning non-profit?

negative times a negative is a positive

It’s just math, duh.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#119

Post by talldayo » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #108

paxys wrote: post #100

$6.6B raise. The company loses $5B per year. So all this money literally gives them just an extra ~year and change of runway. I know the AI hype is sky high at the moment (hence the crazy valuation), but if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. Another interesting part: > Under the terms of the new investment round, OpenAI has two years to transform into a for-pro…

> I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. I mean, what exactly do you see happening? The have a product people love and practically incalculable upside potential. They may or may not end up the winners, but I see no scenario in which it "doesn't end well". It's already "well", even if the company went defunct tomorrow. > that clause with that timeline seems a bit risky. I'm 99% certain that OpenAI drove the terms…

> The have a product people love and practically incalculable upside potential.

...yet they struggle to find productive applications, shamefully hide their training data and can't substantiate their claims of superhuman capability. You could have said the same thing about Bitcoin and been technically correct, but society as a whole moved in a different direction. It's really not that big of a stretch to imagine a world where LLM capability plateaus and OpenAI's value goes down the toilet.

There is simply no evidence for the sort of scaling Sam Altman insists is possible. No preliminary research has confirmed it is around the corner, and in fact tends to suggest the opposite of what OpenAI claims is possible. It's not nuclear fusion or commercial supersonic flight - it's a pipe-dream from start to finish.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#120

Post by semanticist » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:39 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #108

paxys wrote: post #100

$6.6B raise. The company loses $5B per year. So all this money literally gives them just an extra ~year and change of runway. I know the AI hype is sky high at the moment (hence the crazy valuation), but if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. Another interesting part: > Under the terms of the new investment round, OpenAI has two years to transform into a for-pro…

> I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. I mean, what exactly do you see happening? The have a product people love and practically incalculable upside potential. They may or may not end up the winners, but I see no scenario in which it "doesn't end well". It's already "well", even if the company went defunct tomorrow. > that clause with that timeline seems a bit risky. I'm 99% certain that OpenAI drove the terms…

I don't think it really matters how much people love their product if every person using it costs them money. I'm sure people would love a company that sold US$10 bills for 25c, but it's not exactly a sustainable venture.

Will people love ChatGPT et al just as much if OpenAI have to charge what it costs them to buy and run all the GPUs? Maybe, but it's absolutely not certain.

If they "went defunct" tomorrow then the people who just invested US$6bn and lost every penny probably would not agree with your assessment that it "ended well".