3 ms·

Is it profitable though? I do agree that employers may pay, but it’s unclear to me at least if it is profitable for them either.

jononor 1y ago
OpenAI is not at all profitable right now. Which is their plan. They have from the start been focusing on hypergrowth to become one of the very biggest players. The monitization phase comes later. Probably still a few years from now. Of course it remains to be seen if they are actually able to capture a significant amount of the value when the time comes. There are many other strong players - Google and Microsoft have a massive advantages wrt distribution and data collection. Meta as well. And they have existing profitable businesses, so they can afford to give away "AI" for a long time. Cost to serve users right now is quite high, that will likely go down by a factor 10x over the next 10 years (assuming the energy prices don't go haywire).
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > OpenAI is not at all profitable right now We really don't know, in part because they're cooking all kinds of costs into R&D. My hunch is we'll recapitulate the dark fibre of the 1990s, with OpenAI et al burning capital to develop models others profit off. But that's predicated on the assumption that large models can be effectively distilled into cheap-to-run small ones. If that doesn't prove right, or the frontier keeps advancing for decades, the operating model of a high-R&D industry could resemble Intel (and semiconductors broadly) instead.
- B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago
  > so they can afford to give away "AI" for a long time. Thrifty Microsoft is upping the Office 365 Family subscription to 135 USD, throwing in CoPilot. If you choose to cancel, then they'll give you the option of keeping the current 100 USD price for the current product without AI.
jononor 1y ago
For knowledge workers in western companies, 20 USD/month for ChatGPT style tool, seems like it is likely worth it for employers to front. I think over time we will see this included in "standard office tools" like email/messaging/videoconf/documents. Which would make Microsoft and Google very well positioned. But probably everyone will adopt it - so it may not give a competitive advantage to any given company.

jononor 1y ago

OpenAI is not at all profitable right now. Which is their plan. They have from the start been focusing on hypergrowth to become one of the very biggest players. The monitization phase comes later. Probably still a few years from now. Of course it remains to be seen if they are actually able to capture a significant amount of the value when the time comes. There are many other strong players - Google and Microsoft have a massive advantages wrt distribution and data collection. Meta as well. And they have existing profitable businesses, so they can afford to give away "AI" for a long time. Cost to serve users right now is quite high, that will likely go down by a factor 10x over the next 10 years (assuming the energy prices don't go haywire).

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> OpenAI is not at all profitable right now We really don't know, in part because they're cooking all kinds of costs into R&D. My hunch is we'll recapitulate the dark fibre of the 1990s, with OpenAI et al burning capital to develop models others profit off. But that's predicated on the assumption that large models can be effectively distilled into cheap-to-run small ones. If that doesn't prove right, or the frontier keeps advancing for decades, the operating model of a high-R&D industry could resemble Intel (and semiconductors broadly) instead.
B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago
> so they can afford to give away "AI" for a long time. Thrifty Microsoft is upping the Office 365 Family subscription to 135 USD, throwing in CoPilot. If you choose to cancel, then they'll give you the option of keeping the current 100 USD price for the current product without AI.

jononor 1y ago

For knowledge workers in western companies, 20 USD/month for ChatGPT style tool, seems like it is likely worth it for employers to front. I think over time we will see this included in "standard office tools" like email/messaging/videoconf/documents. Which would make Microsoft and Google very well positioned. But probably everyone will adopt it - so it may not give a competitive advantage to any given company.