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I don’t think “AI” as a market is “winner-takes-anything”. Seriously. AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products. The winners will be other bu

by dcow 2y ago

I don’t think “AI” as a market is “winner-takes-anything”. Seriously. AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products. The winners will be other businesses that use AI tooling to make better products. Does OpenAI really make sense as a chatbot company?

baby_souffle 2y ago
> Does OpenAI really make sense as a chatbot company? If the chat bot remains useful and can execute on instructions, yes. If we see a plateau in integrations or abilities, it’ll stagnate.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tom_m 2y ago
  Very few are successful in this position. Zapier comes to mind, but it seems like a tiring business model to me.
mistrial9 2y ago
the subscription is a product
nothercastle 2y ago
I agree the market for 10% better AI isn’t that great but the cost to get there is. An 80% as good model at 10% or even 5% the cost will win every time in the current environment. Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect
- coredog64 2y ago
  > Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect I consult in this space and 80-90% of what I see is chat bots and RAG.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    That’s exactly what I’d expect. Honestly Ai chat bots seems unnecessarily risky because you never really know what they might say on your behalf.
jnwatson 2y ago
AI is a product when you slap an API on top and host it for other businesses to figure out a use case. In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living.
- kirubakaran 2y ago
  > In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living. Not necessarily. Even the original gold rush pickaxe guy Sam Brannan went broke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan Sam of the current gold rush is selling pickaxes at a loss, telling the investors they'll make it up in volume.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    Nvidia is selling GPUs at a loss? TSMC is going broke? I'm pretty sure they are the pickaxe manufactures in this case.
    - k4ch0w 2y ago
      This is where Google thrives, it makes it's own TPUs that run the models.
    - oblio 2y ago
      Clouds are the actual pickaxe manufacturers. Google has a cloud.
  - prewett 2y ago
    According to the linked Wikipedia article, he did not go broke from the gold rush. He went broke because he invested the pickaxe windfall in land, and when his wife divorced him, the judge ruled he had to pay her 50%, but since he was 100% in land he had to sell it. (The article is not clear why he couldn't deed her 50% of it, or only sell 50%. Maybe it happened during a bad market, he had a deadline, etc.) So maybe if the AI pickaxe sellers get divorced it could lead to poor financial results, but I'm not sure his story is applicable otherwise.
- 2y ago
eximius 2y ago
Is Amazon a product or a place to sell other products? Does that make Amazon not a winner?
- dcow 2y ago
  If there were 2 other Amazons all with similar products and the same ease of shipping would you care where you purchased? Amazon is simply the best UX for online ordering. If anything else matched it I’d shop platform agnostic.
jart 2y ago
Seriously, humans are not a product. You hire them for building products.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
There are two perspectives on this. What you said is definitely a good one if you're a business planning to add AI to whatever you're selling. But personally, as a user, I want the opposite to happen - I want AI to be the product that takes all the current products and turns them into tools it can use.
- abaymado 2y ago
  I agree, I want a more intelligent voice assistant similar to Siri as a product, and all my apps to be add-ons the voice assistant could integrate with.
  - inquirerGeneral 2y ago
    [dead]
zer00eyz 2y ago
> AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products. Its products like this (Wells Fargo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg Great Wells Fargo has an "agent" ... and every one else is talking about how to make their products available for agent based AI. People don't want 47 different agents to talk to, then want a single end point, they want a "personal assistant" in digital form, a virtual concierge... And we can't have this, because the open web has been dead for more than a decade.
- sshine 2y ago
  Why can't we have personal assistants because the open web has been dead? I'll be happy with a personal assistant with access to my paid APIs.
ltadeut 2y ago
> The winners will be other businesses that use AI tooling to make better products. agree with you on this. you already see that playing out with Meta and a LOT of companies in China.

by dcow 2y ago

baby_souffle 2y ago

> Does OpenAI really make sense as a chatbot company? If the chat bot remains useful and can execute on instructions, yes. If we see a plateau in integrations or abilities, it’ll stagnate.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tom_m 2y ago
Very few are successful in this position. Zapier comes to mind, but it seems like a tiring business model to me.

mistrial9 2y ago

the subscription is a product

nothercastle 2y ago

I agree the market for 10% better AI isn’t that great but the cost to get there is. An 80% as good model at 10% or even 5% the cost will win every time in the current environment. Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect

coredog64 2y ago
> Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect I consult in this space and 80-90% of what I see is chat bots and RAG.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  That’s exactly what I’d expect. Honestly Ai chat bots seems unnecessarily risky because you never really know what they might say on your behalf.

jnwatson 2y ago

AI is a product when you slap an API on top and host it for other businesses to figure out a use case. In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living.

kirubakaran 2y ago
> In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living. Not necessarily. Even the original gold rush pickaxe guy Sam Brannan went broke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan Sam of the current gold rush is selling pickaxes at a loss, telling the investors they'll make it up in volume.
- pixl97 2y ago
  Nvidia is selling GPUs at a loss? TSMC is going broke? I'm pretty sure they are the pickaxe manufactures in this case.
  - k4ch0w 2y ago
    This is where Google thrives, it makes it's own TPUs that run the models.
  - oblio 2y ago
    Clouds are the actual pickaxe manufacturers. Google has a cloud.
- prewett 2y ago
  According to the linked Wikipedia article, he did not go broke from the gold rush. He went broke because he invested the pickaxe windfall in land, and when his wife divorced him, the judge ruled he had to pay her 50%, but since he was 100% in land he had to sell it. (The article is not clear why he couldn't deed her 50% of it, or only sell 50%. Maybe it happened during a bad market, he had a deadline, etc.) So maybe if the AI pickaxe sellers get divorced it could lead to poor financial results, but I'm not sure his story is applicable otherwise.
2y ago

eximius 2y ago

Is Amazon a product or a place to sell other products? Does that make Amazon not a winner?

dcow 2y ago
If there were 2 other Amazons all with similar products and the same ease of shipping would you care where you purchased? Amazon is simply the best UX for online ordering. If anything else matched it I’d shop platform agnostic.

jart 2y ago

Seriously, humans are not a product. You hire them for building products.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

There are two perspectives on this. What you said is definitely a good one if you're a business planning to add AI to whatever you're selling. But personally, as a user, I want the opposite to happen - I want AI to be the product that takes all the current products and turns them into tools it can use.

abaymado 2y ago
I agree, I want a more intelligent voice assistant similar to Siri as a product, and all my apps to be add-ons the voice assistant could integrate with.
- inquirerGeneral 2y ago
  [dead]

zer00eyz 2y ago

> AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products. Its products like this (Wells Fargo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg Great Wells Fargo has an "agent" ... and every one else is talking about how to make their products available for agent based AI. People don't want 47 different agents to talk to, then want a single end point, they want a "personal assistant" in digital form, a virtual concierge... And we can't have this, because the open web has been dead for more than a decade.

sshine 2y ago
Why can't we have personal assistants because the open web has been dead? I'll be happy with a personal assistant with access to my paid APIs.

ltadeut 2y ago

> The winners will be other businesses that use AI tooling to make better products. agree with you on this. you already see that playing out with Meta and a LOT of companies in China.