5 ms·

It’s interesting how it took OpenAI 7-years to produce GPT4, and in the matter of a few months Google/Intel/etc have released on par offerings. I wonder how mu

It’s interesting how it took OpenAI 7-years to produce GPT4, and in the matter of a few months Google/Intel/etc have released on par offerings. I wonder how much of a competitive moat actually exists in this space.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gberger 3y ago
There is no moat, according to Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322
- Sai_ 3y ago
  I think OpenAI is building a moat right in front of us through their plug-ins idea. Executed well, plug-ins could become ChatGPT's App Store equivalent. Once that happens, OpenAI is undoubtedly going to convert a portion of search traffic into agent delegated work i.e., people will use ChatGPT to start and terminate their searches essentially delegating the work of collating data from multiple sources to ChatGPT. FD - I've applied to release a ChatGPT plug-in and this space looks very interesting to me. PS - Earlier today, I submitted to HN a link to my blog where I analyzed plugins. The HN post sank without a trace but the I wrote my blogpost using the Wolfram plugin in ChatGPT and it was a breeze. I genuinely feel I've seen the future.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    Competing app stores are a thing. Apple's moat wasn't the App Store. It was better quality hardware and a unified experience. I have no doubt that large players can possibly lap OpenAI in terms of ecosystem surrounding a decent AI core. However, OpenAI has the leg up and it's their game to lose at this point.
    - Sai_ 3y ago
      > Competing app stores are a thing This is only a factor if the underlying AI/LLM model becomes as good as OpenAI AND serves millions of people. While open source LLMs are soon going to gain parity with GPT-4/Bard, it is unlikely that they will hit the kind of usage numbers that an OpenAI/Google/Meta can deliver. Even there, I'm not sure Google/Bing will cannibalize their own product to allow third parties to inject data into a search interaction. ChatGPT is a fundamentally different product - it's a humanlike intelligence which is always ready to talk to you and assist you. We haven't ever had anything of comparable quality and reach. The nearest was Alexa but even she was limited to Amazon's catalog and shopping. It's like ChatGPT can be everyone's personal gofer and THAT is huge, imo.
      - r00fus 3y ago
        > it's a humanlike intelligence No that's incorrect. It is auto-fill on steroids trained on years of internet postings from actual humans (ie, reddit, twitter, etc). That input is going to dry up - no longer free (Reddit has said all future posts are going to cost $ to access). Good for OpenAI as it has such a headstart, but many companies can source/tap into legitimate alternative user data streams - FAAMG for sure, but also any company that can convince it's userbase to provide training data that already has a foothold.
        Sai_ 3y ago
        If free human generated content dries up for OpenAI wouldn't it dry up for Google (both Search and Bard) and Bing as well?
        r00fus 3y ago
        Google has its finger on the pulse of everything that goes through google search, gmail, etc. There's a reason everyone 15 years ago thought that Google would produce the first game-changer AI. OpenAI is getting stuff from Bing, but Microsoft controls that data.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    > I think OpenAI is building a moat right in front of us through their plug-ins idea. I think OpenAI is doing the opposite by massively degrading GPT-4 to support the load from all these integrations (as well as their new app). Their moat was the head-and-shoulders-above—their-competitors quality of GPT-4, which had now taken a huge nosedive. I’m not sure why anyone would pay for it instead of GPT 3.5-Turbo. It went from being a competent, if somewhat error probe coder to doing things like randomly inserting C# code blocks in text.
  - oezi 3y ago
    All the plug-in authors are just teaching OpenAI how to generate plug-ins automatically.
    - Sai_ 3y ago
      How so? Unless, I'm missing something, the spec you expose to ChatGPT only tells them which api endpoint to hit. The code powering that endpoint is not visible to ChatGPT. The only argument you could make is that you are giving it machine understandable text to describe an API endpoint. In future, it might not even need the text description if the API endpoint is named well. Quite a stretch though.
      - oezi 3y ago
        It is very likely that you will just point it to the docs of an API and it will create plugins from it. There is no business model for plugins. For APIs it could lead to increased use, but only if the cost is really marginal.
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    Do you find they are better than the opposite - ie an app using the GPT-4 API? To me the plugins seem back to front as far as optimal architecture is concerned.
    - Sai_ 3y ago
      To me, the plugin model allows two things 1. single point of entry: you don't need ten different apps to achieve ten different outcomes. You can do it all right inside ChatGPT 2. Since I can have up to three plugins active inside ChatGPT (as of today), I can express more complex workflows than if I had one app each with no trivial way to stream data from one app to the next. It's like Zapier for your ideas. You talk to ChatGPT > it extracts data from a plugin > you prod it along a bit more > it talks to a second plugin to do X > more chat > talk to third plugin etc etc. Zapier itself only lets you flow data from one app to the next, not act on that data. I expect that as the LLM evolves and matures, they will allow more plugins and start eating up different industries. E.g., why do you need a Google Drive when your ChatGPT can also store files for you?
      - yyyk 3y ago
        >why do you need a Google Drive when your ChatGPT can also store files for you? If the idea is to keep the actual files rather than summaries, than there's an entire world of requirements (data storage reliability, access control, auditing, integration) where OpenAI etc. have no competitive advantage, and their own issues (e.g. prompt injections). LLMs are a bad fit whenever you need it to act like a computer, they replace human style processing. For math, get a calculator. In this case, I'd expect some way to interface to OneDrive or maybe even BackBlaze.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  At this point, the primary moat is cost. Running huge training sets costs money. The models and training data is are no longer particularly challenging.
- yyyk 3y ago
  LibreOffice can accomplish most office tasks. How much moat do Office and GSuite have? Moats are less than 50% tech advantages, and way more than 50% user/product/ecosystem/API integrations. Even if the self-proclaimed 'on par' competition is actually on par, it doesn't matter at all until they release APIs and starts doing products. So far only Google has even begun doing that. The real battle will be over integrations - if OpenAI has that, they'll have their moat alright. Same applies to Google if they actually take off (which is why we should ignore the spin and look at what they're doing).
nico 3y ago
0, but That’s in terms of technology Their brands are still very powerful Anyone can sell sugary drinks, but there is only one CocaCola
- verdverm 3y ago
  I don't think their brand is as strong as people believe. They are pejoratively referred to as "ClosedAI" They have a lot of down time and change the model out from under people, only having 3 months support. It is very hard to build a product on OpenAI in this situation. A close enough model that can run on your own hardware or cloud will get people to move. We are watching and waiting for this point for our own products. For now they are called experiments and demo applications.
  - nico 3y ago
    You are right, and that’s why none of these companies have a tech moat OpenAI might not have the best reputation within tech, but people who are not in tech are completely unaware of this Same with Google and Microsoft Those companies are dominating the mainstream tech media/conversations Even if they are not the best tech or don’t have the best products/services
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    The people referring to them as "ClosedAI" are not a significant portion fo the population. I've overheard strangers talking about ChatGPT (honestly half the time it's ChatGTP), none of them give a shit about OpenAI's philosophy. At most, they have a vague notion that Elon Musk was involved.
m_0x 3y ago
I also thought it was curious. There is a wide range of possibilities for this. My favorite hypothesis is that OpenAI was navigating the unknown open sea trying to answer the question "Is it possible to achieve this?" without knowing if they would ever find a new land. The rest of them already know the answer is "Yes it is" so it's not an unknown open sea anymore with a dubious destination. They know it's possible, it's just a matter of money and time. They probably hired whatever engineer was available, and they paid tons of money to come up with a competitive product.
- zeven7 3y ago
  My own theory is Google had this earlier but couldn't figure out a way to make money from it. I think they felt threatened by it and didn't release what they had.
  - wmf 3y ago
    It's not a theory. Google has been pretty open about what models they have (e.g. PaLM was before GPT-4); they just didn't let anyone use them.
  - sct202 3y ago
    There was a Google engineer last summer who leaked a whole giant chat transcript with one of their LLMs that was pretty impressive before ChatGPT went opened up at the end of the year.
schwarzrules 3y ago
"matter of a few months" / "on par offerings"... My (very very) limited impression is both of those statements aren't fair. Google/intel/etc have been working on lots of AI-related projects, even LLM efforts over years. It's not like any of these companies are bootstrapping LLMs or just posted their first AI engineer job a few months ago. I also don't think I'd call what they're offering "on par" with GPT-4. They're competitive, or impressive substitutes, but my personal tests of Bard at least aren't getting me as useful results as GPT-4. Source: too lazy to look up any. this is just my lame impression. feel free to downvote.
danielmarkbruce 3y ago
"on par" is wrong. Intel have announced they are building a model. Anyone can announce they are building a model.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gberger 3y ago

There is no moat, according to Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35813322

Sai_ 3y ago
I think OpenAI is building a moat right in front of us through their plug-ins idea. Executed well, plug-ins could become ChatGPT's App Store equivalent. Once that happens, OpenAI is undoubtedly going to convert a portion of search traffic into agent delegated work i.e., people will use ChatGPT to start and terminate their searches essentially delegating the work of collating data from multiple sources to ChatGPT. FD - I've applied to release a ChatGPT plug-in and this space looks very interesting to me. PS - Earlier today, I submitted to HN a link to my blog where I analyzed plugins. The HN post sank without a trace but the I wrote my blogpost using the Wolfram plugin in ChatGPT and it was a breeze. I genuinely feel I've seen the future.
- r00fus 3y ago
  Competing app stores are a thing. Apple's moat wasn't the App Store. It was better quality hardware and a unified experience. I have no doubt that large players can possibly lap OpenAI in terms of ecosystem surrounding a decent AI core. However, OpenAI has the leg up and it's their game to lose at this point.
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    > Competing app stores are a thing This is only a factor if the underlying AI/LLM model becomes as good as OpenAI AND serves millions of people. While open source LLMs are soon going to gain parity with GPT-4/Bard, it is unlikely that they will hit the kind of usage numbers that an OpenAI/Google/Meta can deliver. Even there, I'm not sure Google/Bing will cannibalize their own product to allow third parties to inject data into a search interaction. ChatGPT is a fundamentally different product - it's a humanlike intelligence which is always ready to talk to you and assist you. We haven't ever had anything of comparable quality and reach. The nearest was Alexa but even she was limited to Amazon's catalog and shopping. It's like ChatGPT can be everyone's personal gofer and THAT is huge, imo.
    - r00fus 3y ago
      > it's a humanlike intelligence No that's incorrect. It is auto-fill on steroids trained on years of internet postings from actual humans (ie, reddit, twitter, etc). That input is going to dry up - no longer free (Reddit has said all future posts are going to cost $ to access). Good for OpenAI as it has such a headstart, but many companies can source/tap into legitimate alternative user data streams - FAAMG for sure, but also any company that can convince it's userbase to provide training data that already has a foothold.
      - Sai_ 3y ago
        If free human generated content dries up for OpenAI wouldn't it dry up for Google (both Search and Bard) and Bing as well?
        r00fus 3y ago
        Google has its finger on the pulse of everything that goes through google search, gmail, etc. There's a reason everyone 15 years ago thought that Google would produce the first game-changer AI. OpenAI is getting stuff from Bing, but Microsoft controls that data.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  > I think OpenAI is building a moat right in front of us through their plug-ins idea. I think OpenAI is doing the opposite by massively degrading GPT-4 to support the load from all these integrations (as well as their new app). Their moat was the head-and-shoulders-above—their-competitors quality of GPT-4, which had now taken a huge nosedive. I’m not sure why anyone would pay for it instead of GPT 3.5-Turbo. It went from being a competent, if somewhat error probe coder to doing things like randomly inserting C# code blocks in text.
- oezi 3y ago
  All the plug-in authors are just teaching OpenAI how to generate plug-ins automatically.
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    How so? Unless, I'm missing something, the spec you expose to ChatGPT only tells them which api endpoint to hit. The code powering that endpoint is not visible to ChatGPT. The only argument you could make is that you are giving it machine understandable text to describe an API endpoint. In future, it might not even need the text description if the API endpoint is named well. Quite a stretch though.
    - oezi 3y ago
      It is very likely that you will just point it to the docs of an API and it will create plugins from it. There is no business model for plugins. For APIs it could lead to increased use, but only if the cost is really marginal.
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  Do you find they are better than the opposite - ie an app using the GPT-4 API? To me the plugins seem back to front as far as optimal architecture is concerned.
  - Sai_ 3y ago
    To me, the plugin model allows two things 1. single point of entry: you don't need ten different apps to achieve ten different outcomes. You can do it all right inside ChatGPT 2. Since I can have up to three plugins active inside ChatGPT (as of today), I can express more complex workflows than if I had one app each with no trivial way to stream data from one app to the next. It's like Zapier for your ideas. You talk to ChatGPT > it extracts data from a plugin > you prod it along a bit more > it talks to a second plugin to do X > more chat > talk to third plugin etc etc. Zapier itself only lets you flow data from one app to the next, not act on that data. I expect that as the LLM evolves and matures, they will allow more plugins and start eating up different industries. E.g., why do you need a Google Drive when your ChatGPT can also store files for you?
    - yyyk 3y ago
      >why do you need a Google Drive when your ChatGPT can also store files for you? If the idea is to keep the actual files rather than summaries, than there's an entire world of requirements (data storage reliability, access control, auditing, integration) where OpenAI etc. have no competitive advantage, and their own issues (e.g. prompt injections). LLMs are a bad fit whenever you need it to act like a computer, they replace human style processing. For math, get a calculator. In this case, I'd expect some way to interface to OneDrive or maybe even BackBlaze.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
At this point, the primary moat is cost. Running huge training sets costs money. The models and training data is are no longer particularly challenging.
yyyk 3y ago
LibreOffice can accomplish most office tasks. How much moat do Office and GSuite have? Moats are less than 50% tech advantages, and way more than 50% user/product/ecosystem/API integrations. Even if the self-proclaimed 'on par' competition is actually on par, it doesn't matter at all until they release APIs and starts doing products. So far only Google has even begun doing that. The real battle will be over integrations - if OpenAI has that, they'll have their moat alright. Same applies to Google if they actually take off (which is why we should ignore the spin and look at what they're doing).

nico 3y ago

0, but That’s in terms of technology Their brands are still very powerful Anyone can sell sugary drinks, but there is only one CocaCola

verdverm 3y ago
I don't think their brand is as strong as people believe. They are pejoratively referred to as "ClosedAI" They have a lot of down time and change the model out from under people, only having 3 months support. It is very hard to build a product on OpenAI in this situation. A close enough model that can run on your own hardware or cloud will get people to move. We are watching and waiting for this point for our own products. For now they are called experiments and demo applications.
- nico 3y ago
  You are right, and that’s why none of these companies have a tech moat OpenAI might not have the best reputation within tech, but people who are not in tech are completely unaware of this Same with Google and Microsoft Those companies are dominating the mainstream tech media/conversations Even if they are not the best tech or don’t have the best products/services
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  The people referring to them as "ClosedAI" are not a significant portion fo the population. I've overheard strangers talking about ChatGPT (honestly half the time it's ChatGTP), none of them give a shit about OpenAI's philosophy. At most, they have a vague notion that Elon Musk was involved.

m_0x 3y ago

I also thought it was curious. There is a wide range of possibilities for this. My favorite hypothesis is that OpenAI was navigating the unknown open sea trying to answer the question "Is it possible to achieve this?" without knowing if they would ever find a new land. The rest of them already know the answer is "Yes it is" so it's not an unknown open sea anymore with a dubious destination. They know it's possible, it's just a matter of money and time. They probably hired whatever engineer was available, and they paid tons of money to come up with a competitive product.

zeven7 3y ago
My own theory is Google had this earlier but couldn't figure out a way to make money from it. I think they felt threatened by it and didn't release what they had.
- wmf 3y ago
  It's not a theory. Google has been pretty open about what models they have (e.g. PaLM was before GPT-4); they just didn't let anyone use them.
- sct202 3y ago
  There was a Google engineer last summer who leaked a whole giant chat transcript with one of their LLMs that was pretty impressive before ChatGPT went opened up at the end of the year.

schwarzrules 3y ago

"matter of a few months" / "on par offerings"... My (very very) limited impression is both of those statements aren't fair. Google/intel/etc have been working on lots of AI-related projects, even LLM efforts over years. It's not like any of these companies are bootstrapping LLMs or just posted their first AI engineer job a few months ago. I also don't think I'd call what they're offering "on par" with GPT-4. They're competitive, or impressive substitutes, but my personal tests of Bard at least aren't getting me as useful results as GPT-4. Source: too lazy to look up any. this is just my lame impression. feel free to downvote.

danielmarkbruce 3y ago

"on par" is wrong. Intel have announced they are building a model. Anyone can announce they are building a model.