5 ms·

> now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM I mean it is what they want isn't it. They did some random stuff like, playing dota2 or robot arms, even the Da

> now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM I mean it is what they want isn't it. They did some random stuff like, playing dota2 or robot arms, even the Dalle stuff. Now they finally find that one golden goose, of course they are going to keep it. I don't think the company has changed at all. It succeeded after all.

nextaccountic 3y ago
But it's not exactly a company. It's a nonprofit structured in a way to wholly own a company. In that sense it's like Mozilla.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  Nonprofit is a just a facade, it was convenient for them to appear as ethnical under that disguise, but they get rid of it when it is inconvenient in a week. 95% of them would rather join MSFT, than being in a non-profit. Did they company change? I am not convinced.
  - ravst3s 3y ago
    Agree that it's a facade. Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now shields MSFT from regulatory issues. I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back in since they were about to cash out with the tender offer.
    - dizzydes 3y ago
      Does it actually prevent regulators going after them?
hadlock 3y ago
There's no moat in giant LLMs. Anyone on a long enough timeline can scrape/digitize 99.9X% of all human knowledge and build an LLM or LXX from it. Monetizing that idea and staying the market leader over a period longer than 10 years will take a herculean amount of effort. Facebook releasing similar models for free definitely took the wind out of their sails, even a tiny bit; right now the moat is access to A100 boards. That will change as eventually even the Raspberry Pi 9 will have LLM capabilities
- moralestapia 3y ago
  OpenAI (ChatGPT) is already a HUGE brand all around the world. No doubt they're the most valuable startup in the AI space. That's their moat. Unfortunately, in the past few days, the only thing they've accomplished is significantly damaging their brand.
  - hadlock 3y ago
    Branding counts for a lot, but LLM are already a commodity. As soon as someone releases an LLM equivalent to GPT4 or GPT5, most cloud providers will offer it locally for a fraction of what openAI is charging, and the heaviest users will simply self-host. Go look at the company Docker. I can build a container on almost any device with a prompt these days using open source tooling. The company (or brand, at this point?) offers "professional services" I suppose but who is paying for it? Or go look at Redis or Elasti-anything. Or memcached. Or postgres. Or whatever. Industrial-grade underpinnings of the internet, but it's all just commodity stuff you can lease from any cloud provider. It doesn't matter if OpenAI or AWS or GCP encoded the entire works of Shakespeare in their LLM, they can all write/complete a valid limerick about "There once was a man from Nantucket". I seriously doubt AWS is going to license OpenAI's technology when they can just copy the functionality, royalty free, and charge users for it. Maybe they will? But I doubt it. To the end user it's just another locally hosted API. Like DNS.
    - cyanydeez 3y ago
      I think yuou're assuming that OpenAI is charging a $/compute price equal to what it costs them. More likely, they're a loss-leader and generating publicity by making it as cheap as possible. _Everything_ we've seen come out of silicon valley does this, so why would they suddenly be charging the right price?

nextaccountic 3y ago

But it's not exactly a company. It's a nonprofit structured in a way to wholly own a company. In that sense it's like Mozilla.

karmasimida 3y ago
Nonprofit is a just a facade, it was convenient for them to appear as ethnical under that disguise, but they get rid of it when it is inconvenient in a week. 95% of them would rather join MSFT, than being in a non-profit. Did they company change? I am not convinced.
- ravst3s 3y ago
  Agree that it's a facade. Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now shields MSFT from regulatory issues. I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back in since they were about to cash out with the tender offer.
  - dizzydes 3y ago
    Does it actually prevent regulators going after them?

hadlock 3y ago

There's no moat in giant LLMs. Anyone on a long enough timeline can scrape/digitize 99.9X% of all human knowledge and build an LLM or LXX from it. Monetizing that idea and staying the market leader over a period longer than 10 years will take a herculean amount of effort. Facebook releasing similar models for free definitely took the wind out of their sails, even a tiny bit; right now the moat is access to A100 boards. That will change as eventually even the Raspberry Pi 9 will have LLM capabilities

moralestapia 3y ago
OpenAI (ChatGPT) is already a HUGE brand all around the world. No doubt they're the most valuable startup in the AI space. That's their moat. Unfortunately, in the past few days, the only thing they've accomplished is significantly damaging their brand.
- hadlock 3y ago
  Branding counts for a lot, but LLM are already a commodity. As soon as someone releases an LLM equivalent to GPT4 or GPT5, most cloud providers will offer it locally for a fraction of what openAI is charging, and the heaviest users will simply self-host. Go look at the company Docker. I can build a container on almost any device with a prompt these days using open source tooling. The company (or brand, at this point?) offers "professional services" I suppose but who is paying for it? Or go look at Redis or Elasti-anything. Or memcached. Or postgres. Or whatever. Industrial-grade underpinnings of the internet, but it's all just commodity stuff you can lease from any cloud provider. It doesn't matter if OpenAI or AWS or GCP encoded the entire works of Shakespeare in their LLM, they can all write/complete a valid limerick about "There once was a man from Nantucket". I seriously doubt AWS is going to license OpenAI's technology when they can just copy the functionality, royalty free, and charge users for it. Maybe they will? But I doubt it. To the end user it's just another locally hosted API. Like DNS.
  - cyanydeez 3y ago
    I think yuou're assuming that OpenAI is charging a $/compute price equal to what it costs them. More likely, they're a loss-leader and generating publicity by making it as cheap as possible. _Everything_ we've seen come out of silicon valley does this, so why would they suddenly be charging the right price?