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OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

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Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#91

Post by brookst »

epolanski wrote: post #13

I think their vision is as it should be ambitious, but I don't believe they can gain any real technical moat. Models are commodities, even in the case Open ai goes through another major breakthrough nothing can stop some of their employees to run to other companies or founding their own and replicating or bettering the OpenAI results. In fairness I realize that I don't use any of OpenAI's models. There are better alt…

Technical moats are the worst ones. The absolute best you can hope for is patents, but those take years to issue and then you have to fight after tbe fact. Trade secrets are nice but hard to defend.

The best moats are scale (Walmart), brand (“Google” means search), network effects (Facebook, TikTok). None of those are perfect but all are better than just having better tech.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#92

Post by asadotzler »

MndlshnDscpl wrote: post #24
asadotzler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they started from scratch, they didn't take NCSA's Mosaic public, they left the university, brought in some established players, created a new company, and re-wrote the entire browser from scratch. SamA wants to take everything the non-profit created and just make it for profit. If he want's to do that he can create a new company, lure away the talent, start from scratch, and run from there. This "it's just lik…

Agreed. I think originally, it would have been more accurate to say IE was based on Mosaic. If I recall correctly, I think Microsoft bought out Spyglass Mosaic to base IE on, and that browser had been licensed from the NCSA. Netscape on the other hand had originally been Mosaic Communications(anyone remember home.mcom.com?) and changed the name when they did the clean rewrite. I think the name Mozilla came about beca…

Yes. Microsoft licensed a version of Mosaic from Spyglass who got license from NCSA.The name change had nothing to do with the re-write. They never used Mosaic except in the name and were facing a suit from NCSA or the university (I can't remember) so they changed it. You are correct about Mozilla. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years and can attest to that.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#93

Post by aoeusnth1 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #86
phodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One view is that it’s not first mover, but first arriver advantage. Whoever gets to AgI (the fabled city of gold or silver?, Ag pun intended) will achieve exponential gains from that point forward, and that serves as the moat in the limit. So you can think of it as buying a delayed moat, with an option price equivalent to the investment required until you get to that point in time. Either you believe in that view or…

What does AGI even mean in this case? If progress toward more capable and more cost-effective agents is incremental, I don't see a defensible moat. (You can maintain a moat given continued outpaced investment, but following remains more cost-effective)

Since we're talking about the economic impact here, AGI(X) could be defined as being able to do X% of white collar jobs independently with about as much oversight as a human worker would need.

The exponential gains would come from increasing penetration into existing labor forces and industrial applications. The first arriver would have an advantage in being the first to be profitably and practically applicable to whatever domain it's used in.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#94

Post by asadotzler »

mrbungie wrote: post #65
bravura wrote: post #35

People keep saying stuff like this, but I don't believe it: "There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble." AI progress is driven by strong valuable data. Detailed important conversation with a chatbot are much more valuable that quick search queries. As LLMs extend past web UIs, there is even more interaction data to capture and learn from. The company that capture…

Data is becoming a commodity in this regard. That can't be really their moat when Google, Anthropic, etc are publishing similar products.

Well, once the powerful steal it all, of course it becomes commoditization. Had they been required to abide by the law, something that few Silicon Valley VC-backed companies really worry about, this kind of "information" would not be a commodity, it'd be a lucrative property. But, Silicon Valley doesn't give a fuck about anyone so they just stole it all and now it's basically worthless as a result.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#95

Post by asadotzler »

wmf wrote: post #30

I see some people talking about OpenAI "stealing" IP from the nonprofit side, but remember that they went "capped profit" back in 2019. It's possible that GPT-3 and later were developed entirely by the capped-profit side anyway. I doubt there's much if any pre-2019 IP left.

Did they license and pay for all of the non-profit work they utilized in GPT-3? OR are you claiming it was a clean-room re-write? I think you're pretty naive if you think the latter happened.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#96

Post by paxys »

bravura wrote: post #35

People keep saying stuff like this, but I don't believe it: "There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble." AI progress is driven by strong valuable data. Detailed important conversation with a chatbot are much more valuable that quick search queries. As LLMs extend past web UIs, there is even more interaction data to capture and learn from. The company that capture…

Yup. We have seen time and again that companies don't need a "technical moat" to stay in the lead. First mover advantage and a 1-2 year head start is always enough. Of course they also need to keep their foot on the gas and not let their product get overtaken. With all the talent OpenAI has I'm pretty sure they will manage.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#97

Post by ijustlovemath »

skydhash wrote: post #58
ijustlovemath wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think they've been building these multimodal models with? If I had Google application logs from the past few decades I would absolutely be transforming it and loading into my training dataset. I would not be surprised if Google/Meta/Msft are not doing this already When the big companies say they're running out of data, I think they mean it literally. They have hoovered up everything external and internal…

Digital data are only a tiny part of the influx of information that people interact with. It's the same error platforms made with releasing movies straight to their services. Yes, people watch more movies at home, but going to cinemas is a whole experience that encompasses more than just watching a movie. Yes, books are great, but traveling and tutoring is much more impactful.

Sorry, what does that have to do with an OpenAI tech moat?

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#98

Post by MoreMoore »

nemomarx wrote: post #72
ninth_ant wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Network effect, and cultural mind share are two pretty effective moats. Meta and X proven surprisingly resilient in the face of pretty overwhelming negative sentiment. Google maintains monopoly status on Web Search and in Browsers despite not being remarkably better than competition. Microsoft remains overwhelmingly dominant in the OS market despite having a deeply flawed product. Amazon sells well despite a prol…

To be fair despite Valve's tech stack being easy to replicate, their actual competition mostly hasn't replicated their feature set in full? Epic took a while to ramp up to "shopping carts" despite having a pretty large funding model, still doesn't have little gimmicks like trading cards and chat stickers, w/e. That's not really moat but it seems like the competition doesn't want to invest to exact parity. (And a lot…

I have no idea how the other commenter could come to the conclusion that Steam is trivially replaceable.

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#99

Post by semiquaver »

asadotzler wrote: post #90
mvdtnz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you suppose he is shilling, and for whom? I don't know who this Gruber guy is, but it's relieving to hear at least someone talk some sense about the ludicrous levels of investment being poured into something that most users go "heh that's neat" and would never consider paying for.

He's in the "My guys can do now bad" gang. Always has been. Read his blog, it's 90% defending Big Tech and their abuses. He's especially bad about Apple, but all his angles are suspect.

“Do no bad?” This post explicitly calls OpenAI a Ponzi scheme! Did we read the same thing?

Re: OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’

#100

Post by dh2022 »

MndlshnDscpl wrote: post #24
asadotzler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they started from scratch, they didn't take NCSA's Mosaic public, they left the university, brought in some established players, created a new company, and re-wrote the entire browser from scratch. SamA wants to take everything the non-profit created and just make it for profit. If he want's to do that he can create a new company, lure away the talent, start from scratch, and run from there. This "it's just lik…

Agreed. I think originally, it would have been more accurate to say IE was based on Mosaic. If I recall correctly, I think Microsoft bought out Spyglass Mosaic to base IE on, and that browser had been licensed from the NCSA. Netscape on the other hand had originally been Mosaic Communications(anyone remember home.mcom.com?) and changed the name when they did the clean rewrite. I think the name Mozilla came about beca…

Here is Eric Sink's recollection: https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html
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