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We're Joining OpenAI

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Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#131

Post by pjc50 »

simianwords wrote: post #102
kridsdale3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire, based on their recent hires, they're just beginning their Facebook phase. Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now, and expect to see a LOT of money being made by the company a year after that. If they can maintain runway until then.

I predict this won’t be the case. The switching cost to a non Ad LLM is too low for me to be bothered with an ad based LLM. OpenAI must justify ads when its competitors are not sending ads. Why would they? OpenAI models must be so good that it should be worth dealing with ads compared to say Claude or DeepSeek.

That requires you to be able to notice the ads.

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#132

Post by blitzar »

CyberMacGyver wrote: post #11

At this rate it’s better to start a company and get aquihired vs applying and getting hired. Seems like OpenAI speed ran through the Facebook phase and are out of ideas

Given employees (especially at higher levels) of companies wouldnt pass their own "interview" process its a legitimate tactic to getting into the buzier companies these days

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#133

Post by [deleted] »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #118
baq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are a way to get money from users who don’t want to pay with their money. You can’t beat free on price and crucially you can’t beat free on convenience - paying even 1 cent above free introduces complexity and friction. Solve this and you’ll solve the ad problem, but I’m afraid it isn’t possible because money involves controls and regulations which you can’t weasel out of and not end up in jail.

What about tiers like YouTube lite where you pay and you still see advertisement ? How does that fit in your price model because to me it makes no sense at all yet people buy that. Same for Netflix tier with ads.

[deleted]

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#137

Post by mattmaroon »

simianwords wrote: post #129
rat9988 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The switching cost to a non Ad LLM is too low for me to be bothered with an ad based LLM. Provided one with sufficient quality exists.

Yes so what amount of quality are you willing to give up so that you won't be bombarded with ads? Or, what extra money would you pay OpenAI to get a non ad powered LLM model?

The thing is, ads don’t pay that much. Facebook’s ad revenue works out to about $50/user per year . I probably don’t like FB enough to pay $5/mo for it (and even if I did, all the people I interact with that make it useful wouldn’t) but something that’s a personal assistant? Easy.

It’s not hard to imagine ChatGPT just charging.

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#138

Post by torginus »

DrScientist wrote: post #128
kridsdale3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire, based on their recent hires, they're just beginning their Facebook phase. Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now, and expect to see a LOT of money being made by the company a year after that. If they can maintain runway until then.

I do wonder whether we will switch back to ads or there is/will be a big switch to the subscription type model. Would you trust output from OpenAI which is sponsered? I mean it's bad enough now in the ad space where they are increasingly trying to make the ads look more like content - imagine that in woven into your ChatGPT output? The younger generation are quite used to subscription models - netflix, spotify, vario…

The problem with charging more for subscription is they have like 5 competitors who can give you the same thing, and charging more is giving them an open opportunity to trade revenue for market share if you undercut them.

I think they're realizing what most capitalists have realized - if you don't own the whole value chain, you don't own the value.

I bet Alex won't have a dropdown to switch to Claude Sonnet for very long.

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#139

Post by pickledoyster »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #48
bobbiechen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote about this idea here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go... Quick summary, I believe consumer AI experiences will feature ads because the profit opportunity is too large and company valuations depend on it. The hiring of Fidji Simo (ads at Facebook) at OpenAI + and just this week, Vijaye Raji/Statsig also point that way.

We’re in a golden period where AI results are ad-free. One thing I’ve been doing is querying and storing results. For example, “what are the best books on X topic” for every topic I can possibly think that I may want to read about in the future. I’ve found the results to be amazing if you give a sufficiently detailed prompt. I have enough reading to see me through to exit.

The training data is full ads. For books, you have publisher-influenced rankings, SEO slop and promotional social media posts. It's GIGO, and has been that way from the start.

Re: We're Joining OpenAI

#140

Post by andy99 »

simianwords wrote: post #129
rat9988 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The switching cost to a non Ad LLM is too low for me to be bothered with an ad based LLM. Provided one with sufficient quality exists.

Yes so what amount of quality are you willing to give up so that you won't be bombarded with ads? Or, what extra money would you pay OpenAI to get a non ad powered LLM model?

I suspect that ad powered LLMs will also dramatically sacrifice quality- they are a cost center suddenly, no reason to run a model with 10s or 100s of billions of parameters when some 500m thing will provide a minimally plausible scaffold for ad delivery.

Like everything else, most people won't notice a difference and prioritize free over paid.

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