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Here's what I believe the author has missed: much like Amazon for the first (20?) years, they were not interested in making a profit - it would have actually hu

Here's what I believe the author has missed: much like Amazon for the first (20?) years, they were not interested in making a profit - it would have actually hurt them, and the priority was to reinvest in their tech. This seems to have paid off. OpenAI is run by Sam Altman, former YC pres and official smart dude. OpenAI's actual business plan has nothing to do with charging monthly subscription fees. It's more like Sam decided YC wasn't designed to be profitable enough, and wanted to make sure he got the whole thing right this time around. OpenAI will invest $1M and offer early access to next-gen ML models in exchange for 10% equity. If you buy into the premise that a solution built on a highly customized current-gen model will be clobbered by a barely customized next-gen model, then it would seem as though being chosen by OpenAI to build a business with a headstart that nobody else will have access to is literally a license to print money. In other words, OpenAI gets to select founders for and then automatically own 10% of the next generation of successful startups. If this plays out, I predict that OpenAI will be a FAANG-scale company this decade. Ignore OpenAI at your peril.

Madmallard 4y ago
Too bad they want to stifle its potential. It’s already much less useful than it was a couple months ago.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> OpenAI is run by Sam Altman, former YC pres and official smart dude Sam’s chops as an investor are unassailable. As an operator, less so. > OpenAI will invest $1M and offer early access to next-gen ML models in exchange for 10% equity These aren’t super-competitive terms.
- peteforde 4y ago
  I fear that I might have buried my lede. The "early access to the next versions of the OpenAI models" is the only important detail in this arrangement. The most obvious signal so far is Bing/Sydney chat freaking out Google so much that they rushed a Bard demo that shit the bed. $1M may be enough that a quality founding team can get a first iteration out the door without having to distract themselves with fundraising. Essentially, this makes OpenAI a kingmaker. The $1M is just icing. The cake is being able to launch something that nobody else can.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    If your premise is OpenAI has "launch(ed) something that nobody else can" then the whole argument falls apart. No one else wanted to, because of the PR storms associated with this tech. (Tay for MS, and consider "Google fires software engineer who claims AI chatbot is sentient"). All OpenAI did was a relativity trivial (in competitive terms) software-engineering pass over the system to provide the tool in user-friendly and PR-friendly ways. The idea that google, apple, etc. etc. couldnt create anything at OpenAI is clearly absurd. The relevant "AI" here is just rube-goldberg varations on a dot-product computed over the entire internet; any one can do it.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > idea that google, apple, etc. etc. couldnt create anything at OpenAI is clearly absurd They could have. But they didn’t.
      - mjburgess 4y ago
        What do you think this is about? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fires-software-engineer-who-claims-ai-chatbot-is-sentient https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fi...
    - peteforde 4y ago
      As The Dude once said... that's just, like, your opinion, man. I'm confident that you have reasons for holding the position that you hold, but you're not actually offering anything beyond "if something different is possible in the future, one of the incumbents of today would have done it". The simple fact is that OpenAI beat today's current players to market in every meaningful dimension, and we will have to agree to disagree that Google/Apple held back for fear of short-term PR blowback. What is Apple but a company that prides themselves on doing things that everyone freaks out about, like ditching the floppy, CD-ROM, headphone jack?
      - mjburgess 4y ago

Madmallard 4y ago

Too bad they want to stifle its potential. It’s already much less useful than it was a couple months ago.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> OpenAI is run by Sam Altman, former YC pres and official smart dude Sam’s chops as an investor are unassailable. As an operator, less so. > OpenAI will invest $1M and offer early access to next-gen ML models in exchange for 10% equity These aren’t super-competitive terms.

peteforde 4y ago
I fear that I might have buried my lede. The "early access to the next versions of the OpenAI models" is the only important detail in this arrangement. The most obvious signal so far is Bing/Sydney chat freaking out Google so much that they rushed a Bard demo that shit the bed. $1M may be enough that a quality founding team can get a first iteration out the door without having to distract themselves with fundraising. Essentially, this makes OpenAI a kingmaker. The $1M is just icing. The cake is being able to launch something that nobody else can.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  If your premise is OpenAI has "launch(ed) something that nobody else can" then the whole argument falls apart. No one else wanted to, because of the PR storms associated with this tech. (Tay for MS, and consider "Google fires software engineer who claims AI chatbot is sentient"). All OpenAI did was a relativity trivial (in competitive terms) software-engineering pass over the system to provide the tool in user-friendly and PR-friendly ways. The idea that google, apple, etc. etc. couldnt create anything at OpenAI is clearly absurd. The relevant "AI" here is just rube-goldberg varations on a dot-product computed over the entire internet; any one can do it.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > idea that google, apple, etc. etc. couldnt create anything at OpenAI is clearly absurd They could have. But they didn’t.
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      What do you think this is about? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fires-software-engineer-who-claims-ai-chatbot-is-sentient https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fi...
  - peteforde 4y ago
    As The Dude once said... that's just, like, your opinion, man. I'm confident that you have reasons for holding the position that you hold, but you're not actually offering anything beyond "if something different is possible in the future, one of the incumbents of today would have done it". The simple fact is that OpenAI beat today's current players to market in every meaningful dimension, and we will have to agree to disagree that Google/Apple held back for fear of short-term PR blowback. What is Apple but a company that prides themselves on doing things that everyone freaks out about, like ditching the floppy, CD-ROM, headphone jack?
    - mjburgess 4y ago