A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll never even come close to breaking even.
Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
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Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#32Microsoft's corporate structure and company culture is actively hostile to innovation of any kind. This was true in Ballmer's era and is equally true today, no matter how many PR wins Nadella is able to pull off. The company justifies its market cap by selling office software and cloud services contracts to large corporations and governments via an army of salespeople and lobbyists, and that is what it will continue to be successful at. It got lucky by backing OpenAI at the right time, but the delusion of becoming an independent AI powerhouse like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta etc. will never be a reality. Stuff like this is simply not in the company's DNA.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#33Thematically investing billions into startup AI frontier models makes sense if you believe in first-to-AGI likely worth a trillion dollars + Investing in second/third place likely valuable at similar scales too But outside of that MSFTs move indicates that frontier models most valuable current use case - enterprise-level API users - are likely to be significantly commoditized And likely majority of proceeds will be c…
What even is AGI? Like, what does it look like? Genuine question.
Obviously the other responder is being a little tongue-in-cheek but AGI to me would be virtually indistinguishable from a human in both ability to learn, grow and adapt to new information.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#34Maybe I'm just cynical, but I wonder how much of this initiative and energy is driven by people at Microsoft who want their own star to rise higher than it can when it's bound by a third-party technology. I feel like this is something I've seen a fair amount in my career. About seven years ago, when Google was theoretically making a big push to stage Angular on par with React, I remember complaining that the document…
There is a prominent subset of the tech crowd who are ladder climbers - ruthlessly pursuing what is rewarded with pay/title/prestige without regard to actually making good stuff.
There are countless kidding-on-the-square jokes about projects where the innovators left at launch and passed it off to the maintenance team, or where a rebrand was in pursuit of someone's promo project. See also, killedbygoogle.com.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#35Maybe I'm just cynical, but I wonder how much of this initiative and energy is driven by people at Microsoft who want their own star to rise higher than it can when it's bound by a third-party technology. I feel like this is something I've seen a fair amount in my career. About seven years ago, when Google was theoretically making a big push to stage Angular on par with React, I remember complaining that the document…
One of my friends stated this phenomenon very well “it’s a lever they can pull so they do it”. Once you’ve tied your career to a specific technology internally, there’s really only one option: keep pushing it regardless of any alternatives because your career depends on it. So that’s what they do.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#36A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll…
It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#37A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll…
It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.
That is just not correct. As someone who has done the budgets for PhD hiring and funding, you are just wildly underestimating the overhead costs, benefits, cost of raising money, etc.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#38Thematically investing billions into startup AI frontier models makes sense if you believe in first-to-AGI likely worth a trillion dollars + Investing in second/third place likely valuable at similar scales too But outside of that MSFTs move indicates that frontier models most valuable current use case - enterprise-level API users - are likely to be significantly commoditized And likely majority of proceeds will be c…
What even is AGI? Like, what does it look like? Genuine question.
Arnold, a killing machine that decides to become a handy man
Zima blue was good too
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#39A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll…
It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.
$20k can't get you that many PhD. Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month, effectively costs double that because of school overhead and other stuff.
Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.
That is just not correct. As someone who has done the budgets for PhD hiring and funding, you are just wildly underestimating the overhead costs, benefits, cost of raising money, etc.
Respectfully disagree. I had two pHD on a project and spent a total of 120k a year on them.