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OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

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Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#241

Post by lelanthran »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #68
aurareturn wrote: post #12

One thing odd, maybe just to me, is why OpenAI has been stuffing its ranks with former Facebookers who are known to juice growth, find edges, and keep people addicted. They have little background in getting enterprises to buy into a product. Simo herself ran the Facebook app. That organization’s genius is consumer engagement: behavioral hooks, dopamine loops, the relentless optimization of the feed. You can see that…

The worst are the ones who say things like “OpenAI only has 5% paying users!” As if that’s a really bad number. That is the same ratio YouTube, the world’s largest media company, has. And ChatGPT has like 800m users after only a few years of existence. And “once they sell ads, they’ll lose all their users!” As if that happened to FB, Google, YouTube, or Instagram… Some people are really rooting for the downfall of Op…

> And “once they sell ads, they’ll lose all their users!” As if that happened to FB, Google, YouTube, or Instagram…

Don't all those examples have network effects as a moat? As in, once the userbase is in, they lose quite a lot of value by switching to a competitor.

What value does a ChatGPT user lose by switching to a competitor?

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#243

Post by WJW »

lelanthran wrote: post #236
throwaway27448 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this supposed to imply? You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting without understanding who is betting and why. Well, I suppose you can draw the conclusion that "polymarket customers are interested in this topic"

> What is this supposed to imply? Wisdom of the crowd, same as guessing jellybeans in a jar. The exact average is wrong, but it's still pretty damn close because the guesses are likely to follow a normal distribution. If the hump of the normal distribution of these guesses is around 4% (or whatever) odds on, the actual answer is unlikely to be far from that. > You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting wit…

Wisdom of the crowd has some fatal flaws that are especially important when it comes to things like IPOs.

- Most significantly, most scientific research focuses on things that are actually amenable to guesses with a normal distribution, like "amount of jellybeans in a jar" or "length of the border between country A and country B". An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value to converge to.

- It has been shown that as bettors gain more information about the bets of others, predictions lose accuracy and bettors converge to a consensus value instead. It seems to me that online prediction markets would be extremely prone to this as the bets of other people are all there in the market price.

- Prediction markets generally become more accurate as the diversity of the bettor pool grows. The users of polymarket and Kalshi heavily skew towards young men from certain socioeconomic groups, who may be biased towards one or the other outcome.

In the case of an OpenAI IPO, it seems likely multiple of these would converge as people start to fall prey to groupthink because "everybody knows that they'll IPO soon" in their local media bubble.

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#244

Post by ModernMech »

aurareturn wrote: post #212
ModernMech wrote: post #106

I got an ad for the first time in ChatGPT yesterday. Expected, but no thanks, I'm already done with this new focus.

You can switch to another free LLM chat app that doesn't have ads. No problem until those inevitably must add ads to survive.

My hope is that we can get to the point I can run good-enough models on local hardware before they are all ad laden.

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#245

Post by isoprophlex »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #203
smcin wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket (for whatever it's worth) currently has OpenAI IPO at only 4% by end June and 40% by end December (and that's even for a small-float IPO as has become common). https://polymarket.com/event/openai-ipo-by

What is this supposed to imply? You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting without understanding who is betting and why. Well, I suppose you can draw the conclusion that "polymarket customers are interested in this topic"

"polymarket customers think they have some alpha over other consumers on this topic"

Or even less charitable,

"People susceptible to gambling have been manipulated into spending money on this"

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#246

Post by some_random »

WJW wrote: post #243
lelanthran wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this supposed to imply? Wisdom of the crowd, same as guessing jellybeans in a jar. The exact average is wrong, but it's still pretty damn close because the guesses are likely to follow a normal distribution. If the hump of the normal distribution of these guesses is around 4% (or whatever) odds on, the actual answer is unlikely to be far from that. > You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting wit…

Wisdom of the crowd has some fatal flaws that are especially important when it comes to things like IPOs. - Most significantly, most scientific research focuses on things that are actually amenable to guesses with a normal distribution, like "amount of jellybeans in a jar" or "length of the border between country A and country B". An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value…

The question isn't "will they IPO" the question is "when will they IPO" which is not a binary question. The rest of your point about Polymarket users now being mostly degenerate gamblers is true though.

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#247

Post by some_random »

edgyquant wrote: post #234
smcin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Polymarket traders believe an OpenAI IPO this quarter, or even this year, is unlikely (or else almost all of them are hedging, e.g. long on other AI stocks. Which seems unlikely.) Anyone who thinks that position is wrong and it's >4% likely has a clear profit opportunity.

Not everyone is a degenerate gambler

How many degenerate gamblers do you need before it stops being a useful tool?

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#248

Post by jpadkins »

WJW wrote: post #243
lelanthran wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this supposed to imply? Wisdom of the crowd, same as guessing jellybeans in a jar. The exact average is wrong, but it's still pretty damn close because the guesses are likely to follow a normal distribution. If the hump of the normal distribution of these guesses is around 4% (or whatever) odds on, the actual answer is unlikely to be far from that. > You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting wit…

Wisdom of the crowd has some fatal flaws that are especially important when it comes to things like IPOs. - Most significantly, most scientific research focuses on things that are actually amenable to guesses with a normal distribution, like "amount of jellybeans in a jar" or "length of the border between country A and country B". An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value…

if you can identify where and how prediction markets are wrong, why aren't you applying that and making millions?

> - Prediction markets generally become more accurate as the diversity of the bettor pool grows. The users of polymarket and Kalshi heavily skew towards young men from certain socioeconomic groups, who may be biased towards one or the other outcome.

Citation? If your small population is high IQ, accurate predictors and you diversify to average IQ population, won't the accuracy go down not up?

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#249

Post by lelanthran »

WJW wrote: post #243
lelanthran wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this supposed to imply? Wisdom of the crowd, same as guessing jellybeans in a jar. The exact average is wrong, but it's still pretty damn close because the guesses are likely to follow a normal distribution. If the hump of the normal distribution of these guesses is around 4% (or whatever) odds on, the actual answer is unlikely to be far from that. > You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting wit…

Wisdom of the crowd has some fatal flaws that are especially important when it comes to things like IPOs. - Most significantly, most scientific research focuses on things that are actually amenable to guesses with a normal distribution, like "amount of jellybeans in a jar" or "length of the border between country A and country B". An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value…

> An IPO is a binary choice where it either goes public or not. There is no correct value to converge to.

Of course there is - they are betting on the "when".

> It has been shown that as bettors gain more information about the bets of others, predictions lose accuracy and bettors converge to a consensus value instead.

I dunno how to reply to this - that is exactly my point, but it appears (to me, anyway) that you are saying this in disagreement?

Let me clarify - my point is that wisdom of the crowd converges on to a value that is quite near the actual value.

> In the case of an OpenAI IPO, it seems likely multiple of these would converge as people start to fall prey to groupthink because "everybody knows that they'll IPO soon" in their local media bubble.

Sure, if everyone is in the same local media bubble, that once again, that is unlikely, because these are people who don't make money from the result, they make money from correctly predicting it, hence they are exactly the demographic that will seek out more and more information outside of any bubble they may be in.

It's one thing when proponents of $FOO spend time boosting their PoV/wishes/hopes on a forum. It's quite another when they have to put their money where their mouth is: then they are open to new information!

Re: OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)

#250

Post by sph »

lelanthran wrote: post #236
throwaway27448 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this supposed to imply? You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting without understanding who is betting and why. Well, I suppose you can draw the conclusion that "polymarket customers are interested in this topic"

> What is this supposed to imply? Wisdom of the crowd, same as guessing jellybeans in a jar. The exact average is wrong, but it's still pretty damn close because the guesses are likely to follow a normal distribution. If the hump of the normal distribution of these guesses is around 4% (or whatever) odds on, the actual answer is unlikely to be far from that. > You can't reasonably draw any conclusion from betting wit…

> Wisdom of the crowd

I checked Polymarket towards the end of February for the odds of US bombing Iran and they were vanishingly low. IIRC most bets were aiming for summer 2026. YMMV.

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