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OpenAI is too cheap to beat

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91–100 of 426 posts

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#91

I think this is under appreciated. I run a "talk-to-your-files" website with 5ish K MRR and a pretty generous free tier. My OpenAI costs have not exceeded $200 / mo. People talk about using smaller, cheaper models but unless you have strong data security requirements you're burdening yourself with serious maintenance work and using objectively worse models to save pennies. This doesn't even consider OpenAI continuous…

how do ur customers feel about you uploading potentially confidential documents to a 3rd party?

If they are confidential they probably shouldn’t be uploaded to any website no matter if it calls out to OpenAI or does all the processing on their own servers.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please Apple let me replace worthless Siri with ChatGPT on my iPhone. Would completely change how I use the device.

Just yesterday, while driving: "Read last message." Siri: "Sorry. Dictation service is unavailable at the moment." It's past time for excuses. High-level people at Apple need to be fired over this. Hello? Tim? Do your job. Hello? Anybody home...?

Apple is ramping up spending in that area: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/06/apple-conversational-ai...

It’ll probably take a while though.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#93

I think this is under appreciated. I run a "talk-to-your-files" website with 5ish K MRR and a pretty generous free tier. My OpenAI costs have not exceeded $200 / mo. People talk about using smaller, cheaper models but unless you have strong data security requirements you're burdening yourself with serious maintenance work and using objectively worse models to save pennies. This doesn't even consider OpenAI continuous…

how do ur customers feel about you uploading potentially confidential documents to a 3rd party?

It’s simple really, lots of businesses share data with 3rd parties to enable various services. OpenAI provides a service contract claiming they do not mine/reshare/etc the data shared via their API. As the SaaS provider, you just need to call it out your user service agreement.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#94

I think OpenAI may eventually have to go upmarket, as basic "good enough" AI becomes increasingly viable and cheap/free on consumer level devices, supplied by FOSS models and apps. Apple may be leading the way here, with Apple Silicon prioritizing AI processing and built into all their devices. These capabilities are free (or at least don't require an extra sub), and just used to sell more hardware. OpenAI is clearly…

Yep, we agree that the obvious direction of innovation for OSS models is smaller and cheaper, likely at roughly the same quality: https://generatingconversation.substack.com/p/open-source-ll...

Also more privacy respecting, and more customisable / flexible.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenAI is clearly going to compete in that market with its upcoming phone. Excuse me, I'm not an english native, you mean like a smart phone? Or do you mean some sort of other new business direction? Where did you get the info thtat they're planning to launch a phone?

Yes a smartphone, /corrected. It's a recent announcement: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/technology/openai-apple-s...

It's not a really a phone. they mention ambient computing.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#96
post #74

I think OpenAI may eventually have to go upmarket, as basic "good enough" AI becomes increasingly viable and cheap/free on consumer level devices, supplied by FOSS models and apps. Apple may be leading the way here, with Apple Silicon prioritizing AI processing and built into all their devices. These capabilities are free (or at least don't require an extra sub), and just used to sell more hardware. OpenAI is clearly…

> I think OpenAI may eventually have to go upmarket Let me introduce you to the VC business model. Get comical amounts of money. Charge peanuts for an initial product. Build a moat once you trap enough businesses inside it. Jack up prices.

don't forget the sneaky TOS changes you have to agree to

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#97

Is this a reflection of OpenAI’s massive scale making it so cheap for them? Or is it the deal with Microsoft for cloud services making it cheap? Or are they just operating at a massive loss to kill off other competition? Or something else?

There’s also just the benefits of being in market, at scale and being exposed to the full problem space of serving and maintaining services that use these models. It’s one thing to train and release and OSS model, it’s another to put it into production and run all the ops around it.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying they will on the high-end, but maybe on the low end. Apple's strategy is to embed local AI in all their devices. Local AI will never be as capable as AI running in massive GPU datacenters, but if it can get to a point that it's "good enough" for most average users, that may be enough for Apple to undercut the low end of the market.

> Local AI will never be as capable as AI running in massive GPU datacenters I'm not sure this is true, even in the short term. For some things yes, that's definitely true. But for other things that are real-time or near real-time where network latency would be unacceptable, we're already there. For example, Google's Pixel 8 launch includes real-time audio processing/enhancing which is made possible by their new Tens…

> But for other things that are real-time or near real-time where network latency would be unacceptable, we're already there.

Agreed. Something else I wonder is if local AI in mobile devices might be better able to learn from its real-time interactions with the physical world than datacenter-based AI.

It's walking around in the world with a human with all its various sensors recording in real-time (unless disabled) - mic, camera, GPS/location, LiDAR, barometer, gyro, accelerometer, proximity, ambient light, etc. Then the human uses it to interact with the world too in various ways.

All that data can of course be quickly sent to a datacenter too, and integrated into the core system there, so maybe not. But I'm curious about this difference and wonder what advantages local AI might eventually confer.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#99

I think this is under appreciated. I run a "talk-to-your-files" website with 5ish K MRR and a pretty generous free tier. My OpenAI costs have not exceeded $200 / mo. People talk about using smaller, cheaper models but unless you have strong data security requirements you're burdening yourself with serious maintenance work and using objectively worse models to save pennies. This doesn't even consider OpenAI continuous…

Are any OpenAI powered flows available to public, logged-out user traffic? I’ve worried (maybe irrationally) about doing this in a personal project and then dealing with malicious actors and getting stuck with a big bill.

Re: OpenAI is too cheap to beat

#100
post #32

"too cheap to beat" sounds anti-competitive and monopolistic. Large LLM providers are not dissimilar to industrial operations at scale - it requires alot of infrastructure and the more you buy/rent, the cheaper it gets. Early bird gets the worm I guess.

Not sure I understand your comment, but generally you have to prove anti-competitiveness /beyond/ too cheap to beat (unless it is a proven loss-leader which, viz all big tech companies, seems very hard to prove)
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