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How will OpenAI compete?

ben-evans.com

431–440 of 693 posts

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#431

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…

Anecdata point: I canceled my ChatGPT pro subscription last year over some shitty thing Altman did at OpenAI and easily moved over to Claude. The only thing I took with me was the system prompt or whatever it's called, I couldn't care less about my conversation history. I'm planning to do the same thing with my Claude subscription if Anthropic kowtows to the Pentagon. These services are not sticky at all IMO.

Anthropic already decided to do business with the "killing people" department of the government. I think the battle was lost there, rather than whether or not they cross a line in the sand they drew to act as if they're the ethical AI company despite making products that are used to kill people. I'm sure the result of this battle will be some compromise that allows the Pentagon to get whatever they want while offering a fig leaf to Anthropic to continue their ethicality show.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#432
post #258
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has a good name. It's weird and awkward but it still rolls off the tongue. And I am saying that as a non native English speaker because the name has been migrated to other languages with the English pronunciation. In comparison, Claude's name is very bad, it just doesn't sound right and people might mishear me when I say it. I never say "Claude" when talking to other, especially non-technical people, and inst…

In Japan many people call it "Chappie" (チャッピー), which I think is much easier to say and less awkward, haha. I see a lot of people using it here daily. I feel like OpenAI should lean into that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#433
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT and Gemini has cross conversation personalization. I believe the former is off by default and the latter is on.

Is there more detailed information how this works? I used to assume that it can be beneficial to switch to a new chat to avoid having took much irrelevant context in the interaction. How does this personalization happen, how does it decide which parts are relevant from one conversation to another? It doesn't seem like there's a way to inspect or alter what kind of information Gemini had saved as "important informatio…

There’s a toggle in every new Gemini chat to turn off personalization for that chat. I assume you need to make sure it’s mom globally first?

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#434
post #379

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…

Why would you want to move conversations with you? I use multiple different models, I don't care about the history. My "brain" in terms of projects, is local on my computer. I have a simple set of system rules that I need to copy. I am not everyone, I understand that. What I try to say: don't overestimate the lock in effect of AI. I doubt there is one.

> I don't care about the history.

I've actually been using the Gemini app more because it auto-deletes old history. I like using LLMs without thinking this is going to stick around forever.

Models are relatively interchangeable for day-to-day use anyway.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#435
post #338

My father uses ChatGPT extensively. My friend, whos an electrician, but has 0 things to do with computers, even called it Chat once and I said who? Because for me its ChatGPT. He also uses it extensively. Although I would bet they won't be willing to pay, advertisements will eventually hit them. And with inference prices going down, with distilled models being used, OpenAI will profit, and people will still hapily us…

Chat.com is ChatGPT so likely that's why he called it Chat.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#436

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. The near billion users OpenAI has is actually a real moat and might translate into decent chunk of revenue.

Maybe you're overestimating their "moat" and stickiness. The dust is still settling on this madness and "OpenAI"[1] creates a lot of noise in the market.

These LLMs are being rapidly commoditized, very soon they will become as "boring" as virtual machines or containers. Altman has the exceptional skill to dupe people into giving their money to him. The "infinite money glitch" that he has been exploiting isn't really infinite.

I just hope there'll be a breakthrough with truly transparent LLMs that will stabilize this madness. As I've griped[2] two years ago, I find OpenAI too scummy, and it is unlikely that they will "win" with their sleazy ways.

[1] Air quotes because of their persistent abuse of the word "open"

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40425735

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#437

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 don't think they have a billion active users who opted-in. Google/Apple/Microsoft are the gatekeepers (for the most part) for retail users and they decide who is on by default. The USG isn't going to step-in and the EU won't step in either.

So I suspect that Google will lean into Gemini, Microsoft will lean into OpenAI, and Apple ... it's a tough question what they do in the longer term.

For business users it's a different story and I see room for Anthropic to shine. And then there are the specialty AI services but those are all different markets from the general purpose AI.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#438
post #437

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 don't think they have a billion active users who opted-in. Google/Apple/Microsoft are the gatekeepers (for the most part) for retail users and they decide who is on by default. The USG isn't going to step-in and the EU won't step in either. So I suspect that Google will lean into Gemini, Microsoft will lean into OpenAI, and Apple ... it's a tough question what they do in the longer term. For business users it's a d…

I think Google may just end up winning on the good enough / cheap enough dimensions as things get more commoditized in LLM world.. in that they can be the lower cost provider given how vertically integrated they would be compared to OpenAI relying on hyperscalers.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case. I use OpenAI a lot on the paid plan via the UI. It now knows absolutely loads about me and seems to have a massive amount of cross conversational memory. It's really getting very close to what you'd expect from a human conversation in this regard. Sure the model itself is still stateless, and if you use the API then what you say is true. But they are doing so much unseen summarisation and longer…

> It now knows absolutely loads about me Baffled that someone tech literate would be boasting about this in the year 2026. I mean, you do you, we all have different priorities and threat vectors, but this is the furthest from what I would personally want.

This is the same as when Google got big (and Facebook, etc...). We have some privacy focused competitors (Kagi, etc...) but most people are quite happy to just give Google (and worse, Facebook) everything.

AI is just a new technology but this has been ramping up for decades now.

Re: How will OpenAI compete?

#440
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have lost quite a bit of reputation in the tech world, maybe. All my 'normie' friends are using ChatGPT though and have no concept of their reputation, nor intention of switching. Most people I know are hardly even aware of alternatives, even of Gemini, though everyone has a Google account. I personally also use ChatGPT and have zero reason not to, currently. I might switch if they royally mess up, but everything t…

But would they pay for it? That's the difference.

More people pay for ChatGPT than any other Consumer AI service by far, and when ads rollout, it won't matter that much.
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