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The sudden fall of Sora

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Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#51

Post by ticulatedspline »

_doctor_love wrote: post #29

It makes total sense to me that this would happen. The economics around Sora and video generation in general are just not there right now, and if you're a company that's also doing research into these things, that's basically a bottomless pit for money. I think OpenAI ceding the space to Google and others for the moment is probably the smart move. I had fun using Sora and I'm bummed to see it will get removed from th…

I'm actually very surprised, even if it was costing money. Their technological moat has turned out to be much more shallow than expected and competition fiercer. At the moment I think their greatest asset is brand and engagement. With a popular product and a deal with Disney seemed like a slam dunk on remaining prominent in the brand space and retaining user engagement.

Not only have they thrown out a name everyone knew, and exited the market segment, but they've also triggered Netflix/Google graveyard woes. "We may not maintain products you like". This could make people wary of buying into new products, "will it be there in a year?"

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#52

Post by relation_al »

I went to the Snowflake Summit last year. And Altman sat on the stage saying LLMs would be coming up with new chip architectures and medical solutions within a year, and that AGI was around the corner. I turned on GPT and let it listen and respond to some of what he said. It replied, in less flattering terms than I am about to use, that he was -- being too optimistic. When you are bouncing around between AGI, Mickey Mouse videos, ad algorithms, and p@rn-bots, I think it's appropriate to question your motives.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#53

Post by htrp »

btown wrote: post #34
_doctor_love wrote: post #29

It makes total sense to me that this would happen. The economics around Sora and video generation in general are just not there right now, and if you're a company that's also doing research into these things, that's basically a bottomless pit for money. I think OpenAI ceding the space to Google and others for the moment is probably the smart move. I had fun using Sora and I'm bummed to see it will get removed from th…

If anything, Sora was an experimental question: giving away video generation is expensive, but is the voluntary user labeling and engagement data, which can be fed into RLHF, accretive enough to model training that it's a meaningful trade to make? The shutdown of the service makes it clear that the answer was "no." (It's not a particularly useful signal, though, in evaluating OpenAI's future. It could mean that OpenA…

I thought the expectation was cleaning up the balance sheet in preparation for IPO.... along with a pivot towards codegen revenue.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#54

Post by drawfloat »

bko wrote: post #47
drawfloat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is one of the most hyped tech products ever. We’ve had nearly 4 years of hype. From claims of AGI to claims we need UBI because of the ways it will devastate the work force.

What are you talking about? It has nearly a billion users. It's the fastest growing consumer app in history. What about it is hype? What does hype even mean? You might not like the discussion around the tech, but to say the tech is hyped like something like NFTs where they had a crazy amount of media coverage and a tiny minority of people actually using it, is just wrong.

AGI is around the corner, nobody will code by the end of 2026, and the devastation is likely to be so vast we need to start looking at UBI now to stem the tide of job losses. Movie studios should also start worrying because Sora will soon generate all the movies people need tailored to exactly what they want.

Yes, absolutely zero hype.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#55

Post by [deleted] »

adfm wrote: post #49
btown wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, Sora was an experimental question: giving away video generation is expensive, but is the voluntary user labeling and engagement data, which can be fed into RLHF, accretive enough to model training that it's a meaningful trade to make? The shutdown of the service makes it clear that the answer was "no." (It's not a particularly useful signal, though, in evaluating OpenAI's future. It could mean that OpenA…

OpenAI is undergoing a significant strategic pivot toward developing world models.

[deleted]

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#56

Post by rchaud »

bko wrote: post #47
drawfloat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is one of the most hyped tech products ever. We’ve had nearly 4 years of hype. From claims of AGI to claims we need UBI because of the ways it will devastate the work force.

What are you talking about? It has nearly a billion users. It's the fastest growing consumer app in history. What about it is hype? What does hype even mean? You might not like the discussion around the tech, but to say the tech is hyped like something like NFTs where they had a crazy amount of media coverage and a tiny minority of people actually using it, is just wrong.

Candy Crush was downloaded over a billion times within 3 years of its release. Whether or not users kept playing it after the first few levels is unknown. I imagine it's roughly similar for OpenAI; lots of curiosity-driven signups from the hoi polloi, but retention likely drops off once familiar properties like Google and Meta start embedding AI summaries in their own highly-visited tools.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#58

Post by etempleton »

relation_al wrote: post #52

I went to the Snowflake Summit last year. And Altman sat on the stage saying LLMs would be coming up with new chip architectures and medical solutions within a year, and that AGI was around the corner. I turned on GPT and let it listen and respond to some of what he said. It replied, in less flattering terms than I am about to use, that he was -- being too optimistic. When you are bouncing around between AGI, Mickey…

I think the only logical conclusion is that many of these tech leaders are liars or have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Maybe somewhere in between.

On here and else where there are people who see AI for what it is and are absolutely blown away by it and defend these people without realizing that they are regularly promising something much more to investors that can never be fulfilled. The idea that LLMs can ever reach any sense of true AGI is delusional.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#59

Post by etempleton »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #17

Was ChatGPT hyped? It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it. From what I remember they still had an invite process when they were getting popular and the demand clearly overwhelmed their servers several times, indicating a much bigger response than they expected. If anything I think Op…

I think the way Sam Altman talked about AI. The framing of it. That they had to hold back the real version because it is just too powerful; they don't even know how it is working; it is already doing these incredible things that would change the world, but we can't / won't release it was all cleverly orchestrated.

Re: The sudden fall of Sora

#60

Post by etempleton »

tbreschi wrote: post #18

What is the fallout if OpenAI goes under?

Investors immediately lose confidence in the entire space. Anyone who doesn't have other revenue streams -- e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft, X -- probably goes under or sells shortly thereafter. the aforementioned big tech companies pull back investment considerably because shareholders no longer want to see investment in AI because they see it as a waste of capital resources that could be spent on things that actually make money. They go for the simplest lowest cost implementations and largely abandon advancements. Billions if not trillions of dollars in data center plans and hardware purchases are cancelled causing significant pain in the hardware sector. Hardware manufactures try to pivot to the next thing, but it will be multi year slow process to pivot.
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