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How will OpenAI compete?

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Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#41

Post by goolz »

morkalork wrote: post #36
shubhamjain wrote: post #29

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

I commute on the train, I see students studying with it. I go for brunch on the weekend, I see parents consulting it while at the table with their infants. I'm at work, colleagues are using it all day. I leave work and I overhear the random woman smoking in the alleyway talking on her cellphone saying "so I asked chatgpt". It's mind-bogglingly pervasive, the last time something had such a seizmic cultural impact like…

How many of those people are paying? I think many say “use ChatGPT” to mean any LLM. As you noted it seems you just see ChatGPT in the wild but that is anecdotal. It is certainly pervasive right now. But I know a lot of people currently switching to Gemini.

I personally prefer claude models for all my work. If I were them I would be very worried. They are never giving us AGI and I am skeptical they are worth .5 trillion. Their cash burn is insane. Once ads and price hikes come, people will migrate to companies that can still afford to subsidize (like Google).

Plus I heard they lowered projections recently? Sam honestly comes off as a grifter.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#42

Post by kdheiwns »

system2 wrote: post #32

This is confirmation bias. HN and other tech people are focusing on the programming aspect of AI more than anything else. The average user does not use it for that, and they don't care. ChatGPT became something like Kleenex.

Kleenex was exactly what I had in mind when reading other comments. And just like Kleenex, where people use whatever tissue they find and forget the word "tissue" even exists, ChatGPT seems to be becoming a genericized term that just means "AI chatbot."

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#43

Post by CharlesW »

shubhamjain wrote: post #29

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

> Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness.

I think you're underestimating how fickle consumers are, and how much their choices are based on fashion and emotion. A couple more of these, and OpenAI will find itself relegated to the kids' table with Grok and Perplexity. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/15/1121900/gpt4o-gr...

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#44

Post by throwaway13337 »

These sorts of doom articles are interesting in that they are from the perspective of tech company valuations. Why is this the important perspective?

For the humanity perspective, this doom is very optimistic. It says that these LLMs currently disrupting the platforms cannot themselves be the next platforms.

Maybe no one will have 'the ability to make people do something that they don't want to do' sort of power with this next stage in computing.

Sounds good to me.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#45

Post by ryanlitalien »

I speak native English and barebones high school Spanish. I recently visited Costa Rica and almost every time there was a language barrier issue (unknown word or phrase), the local folks opened ChatGPT, said what they were trying to say in Spanish and then had ChatGPT convert it to English. It was everywhere.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#46

Post by arctic-true »

theptip wrote: post #24

I think this take underestimates a couple points: 1) the opportunities for vertical integration are huge. Anthropic originally said they didn’t want to build IDEs, then realized the pivot to Claude Code was available to them. Likewise when one of these companies can gobble up Legal, Medical, etc why would they let companies like Harvey capture the margins? 2) oss models are 6-12 months behind the frontier because of…

To go vertical they’d need to illustrate the value-add, a problem that the vertical competitors already have. Why use Claude for Accountants at $300/month when regular Claude will do the same thing for much less? The stock answer is that Claude for Accountants keeps your data more secure and doesn’t train on it. But a) I think the enterprise consumer is much less likely to trust a model creator not to stick its hand in the cookie jar than a middleman who needs the trust to survive, and b) the vertical competitors typically don’t use the absolute most up-to-date models in their products anyway, so why not just go open-source and run everything in-house? 6 months is a long time in tech, but it’s the blink of an eye in most white-collar professions.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#47

Post by boxedemp »

morkalork wrote: post #36
shubhamjain wrote: post #29

Everyone is actually underestimating stickiness. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue. My wife, for example, uses ChatGPT on a daily basis, but has found no reason to try anything else. There are no network effects for sure, but people have hundreds and thousands on conversation on these apps that can't be easily moved elsewhere. Understandable tha…

I commute on the train, I see students studying with it. I go for brunch on the weekend, I see parents consulting it while at the table with their infants. I'm at work, colleagues are using it all day. I leave work and I overhear the random woman smoking in the alleyway talking on her cellphone saying "so I asked chatgpt". It's mind-bogglingly pervasive, the last time something had such a seizmic cultural impact like…

My sister uses Gemini and calls it chat gpt. It's becoming a genericide.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#48

Post by kshacker »

ryanlitalien wrote: post #45

I speak native English and barebones high school Spanish. I recently visited Costa Rica and almost every time there was a language barrier issue (unknown word or phrase), the local folks opened ChatGPT, said what they were trying to say in Spanish and then had ChatGPT convert it to English. It was everywhere.

I have done that at my home. My wife calls maids. They are there. I need to go to restroom. Ask my wife. She is struggling to communicate. It took me 3 seconds to realize ChatGPT could help. And it did.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#50

Post by jen20 »

goolz wrote: post #41
morkalork wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commute on the train, I see students studying with it. I go for brunch on the weekend, I see parents consulting it while at the table with their infants. I'm at work, colleagues are using it all day. I leave work and I overhear the random woman smoking in the alleyway talking on her cellphone saying "so I asked chatgpt". It's mind-bogglingly pervasive, the last time something had such a seizmic cultural impact like…

How many of those people are paying? I think many say “use ChatGPT” to mean any LLM. As you noted it seems you just see ChatGPT in the wild but that is anecdotal. It is certainly pervasive right now. But I know a lot of people currently switching to Gemini. I personally prefer claude models for all my work. If I were them I would be very worried. They are never giving us AGI and I am skeptical they are worth .5 trill…

I actually encountered this today - one of a group I am planning a trip with posted some of the breathless nonsense that ChatGPT produced ("you're not picking a hotel, you're picking a group dynamic..." and other such textual diarrhea).

It turned out the only reason ChatGPT was because it is free for small enough volume usage. My suggestion to see what Claude had to say instead was met with "huh, you have to pay for it?". It's not like these are people that can't afford $20 per month for a subscription, but it might be that these assistants aren't even worth that for typical "normie" use cases.

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