and yet deepseek just created an amazing model with the fraction of their compute resources
It's more of a distilled model, not a fair 1:1 comparison
OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
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Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#32I agree that at its current rate of $20 per month and continuous cash burn, OpenAI’s model doesn’t seem sustainable. But the same could have been said about Google in its early days. Back then, Google spent heavily to index websites without a clear path to profitability—until it figured out how to monetize. Similarly, OpenAI will likely release more products to generate revenue. OpenAI has the potential to create the…
If you’re going to downvote, please consider leaving a comment—I’d really value the feedback.
I’d like to see more thoughtful discussion here. The debate often feels stuck between oversimplified takes like “It’s just a commodity” and “No, it’s a game changer!” Let’s assume for a moment that OpenAI operates as a commodity business but still figures out how to become profitable, even with small margins. After all, US Steel was a commodity and became hugely successful.
Given these assumptions, why do you think OpenAI might not succeed? Let’s move the conversation forward.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#33I agree that at its current rate of $20 per month and continuous cash burn, OpenAI’s model doesn’t seem sustainable. But the same could have been said about Google in its early days. Back then, Google spent heavily to index websites without a clear path to profitability—until it figured out how to monetize. Similarly, OpenAI will likely release more products to generate revenue. OpenAI has the potential to create the…
> Back then, Google spent heavily to index websites without a clear path to profitability
[citation needed]
Google's goal was always advertising just like every other search engine.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#34This rings true to my ears: > There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. Thus, effectively, OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution. The revolution is real, but it’s ultimately going to be a commodity technology layer, not the foundation of a defensible proprietary moat. In 1995 investors mistakenly…
I get the moat idea. But are there really any moats? What's a good moat these days anyway? Isn't being first and "really good" fine as well?
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#35People keep saying stuff like this, but I don't believe it: "There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble."
AI progress is driven by strong valuable data. Detailed important conversation with a chatbot are much more valuable that quick search queries. As LLMs extend past web UIs, there is even more interaction data to capture and learn from.
The company that captures the most human-AI interaction data will have a TREMENDOUS moat.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#36This doesn't seem to say much to back its comparisons. Wouldn't spending a giant amount of money create some sort of moat?
From what I'm reading of the industry, no not really. The laughably huge investments seem to buy OpenAI approximately a 6 month head start over open source models, which is not much.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#37This rings true to my ears: > There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. Thus, effectively, OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution. The revolution is real, but it’s ultimately going to be a commodity technology layer, not the foundation of a defensible proprietary moat. In 1995 investors mistakenly…
I get the moat idea. But are there really any moats? What's a good moat these days anyway? Isn't being first and "really good" fine as well?
Network effects are a moat.
A vertically integrated system that people depend on with non-portable integrations is a moat.
Regulatory Capture is a moat.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#38I see some people talking about OpenAI "stealing" IP from the nonprofit side, but remember that they went "capped profit" back in 2019. It's possible that GPT-3 and later were developed entirely by the capped-profit side anyway. I doubt there's much if any pre-2019 IP left.
There is no profit yet...
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#39Gruber's shilling some here. Andreesen et al. started over from scratch when they created Netscape. They didn't use any of the NCSA code. It was a ground up re-write. SamA wants to take everything the non-profit built and use it directly in HIS for profit enterprise. Fuck him.
What do you suppose he is shilling, and for whom? I don't know who this Gruber guy is, but it's relieving to hear at least someone talk some sense about the ludicrous levels of investment being poured into something that most users go "heh that's neat" and would never consider paying for.
Gruber is OG. You should look him up.
Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
#40This rings true to my ears: > There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. Thus, effectively, OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution. The revolution is real, but it’s ultimately going to be a commodity technology layer, not the foundation of a defensible proprietary moat. In 1995 investors mistakenly…
Genuinely curious if anyone has ideas how an LLM provider could moat AI. They feel interchangeable like bandwidth providers and seem like it will be a never ending game of leapfrog. I thought perhaps we’d end up with a small set of few top players just based on the scale of investment but now I’ve also seen impressive gains from much smaller companies & models, too.