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Break up into what? They have one product.

nickff 1y ago
And the one product is made up of two components (training and inference) which are each extremely competitive, undifferentiated, and losing money.
gaindustries 1y ago
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kronicum2025 1y ago
Break it off from Microsoft definitely. Same with Github I think.
pinnochio 1y ago
No, they don't? Sora is a separate product, and they're working on a social media platform. And that thing with Jony Ive. Other things, too, that I'm sure I'm forgetting. At any rate, this looks like they made a headline out of a passing comment. I wouldn't read too much into it. Edit: lol at the AI bros downvoting facts.
mattlutze 1y ago
Bell also "just" provided telephone service, but had a nation-wide practical monopoly, and so was broken up into different regional operators. The US has since gotten bad at dealing with companies like this. A company like Google or Amazon could/should be broken up into a few parts and would likely result in those parts together being worth more than when it was just the one company, and more competition in each industry. Too early and the break-up can kill innovation. Too late and the company will have been a rent-seeking operation for so long that it chokes out dynamism. It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up.
- tptacek 1y ago
  Yeah: it had a nationwide monopoly. Breaking up the Bells meant breaking that monopoly. That was the public policy goal of forcibly reorganizing the company. How do you apply that to the OpenAI case? You have to draw the rest of the owl here.
  - pinnochio 1y ago
    You don't seem to have read the comment you're replying to carefully enough.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      No, I'm just not being clear enough. OpenAI doesn't have a monopoly. They don't even meaningfully have colluding BUs; you can't "break them up" (you'd basically just be killing it). Killing or intentionally degrading a business can be legit public policy, but then just say that, don't pretend that the problem is that OpenAI is anticompetitive.
      - pinnochio 1y ago
        Here's the relevant line you seem to have missed: > It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up. He wasn't proposing breaking it up as it is, which is what your comment assumes. However, as I said in another comment, they do have other products (Sora and others in the pipeline that are meaningfully separate from their core product). I'd agree it's too early to break them up (at least by conventional anti-trust standards), and that if anything, they should be regulated on other dimensions.
XorNot 1y ago
This is Bernie Sanders trying to do populism on a subject he doesn't know much about.

And the one product is made up of two components (training and inference) which are each extremely competitive, undifferentiated, and losing money.

gaindustries 1y ago

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kronicum2025 1y ago

Break it off from Microsoft definitely. Same with Github I think.

pinnochio 1y ago

No, they don't? Sora is a separate product, and they're working on a social media platform. And that thing with Jony Ive. Other things, too, that I'm sure I'm forgetting. At any rate, this looks like they made a headline out of a passing comment. I wouldn't read too much into it. Edit: lol at the AI bros downvoting facts.

mattlutze 1y ago

Bell also "just" provided telephone service, but had a nation-wide practical monopoly, and so was broken up into different regional operators. The US has since gotten bad at dealing with companies like this. A company like Google or Amazon could/should be broken up into a few parts and would likely result in those parts together being worth more than when it was just the one company, and more competition in each industry. Too early and the break-up can kill innovation. Too late and the company will have been a rent-seeking operation for so long that it chokes out dynamism. It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up.

tptacek 1y ago
Yeah: it had a nationwide monopoly. Breaking up the Bells meant breaking that monopoly. That was the public policy goal of forcibly reorganizing the company. How do you apply that to the OpenAI case? You have to draw the rest of the owl here.
- pinnochio 1y ago
  You don't seem to have read the comment you're replying to carefully enough.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    No, I'm just not being clear enough. OpenAI doesn't have a monopoly. They don't even meaningfully have colluding BUs; you can't "break them up" (you'd basically just be killing it). Killing or intentionally degrading a business can be legit public policy, but then just say that, don't pretend that the problem is that OpenAI is anticompetitive.
    - pinnochio 1y ago
      Here's the relevant line you seem to have missed: > It might be too early for OpenAI, but we shouldn't wait until they own all of the next Internet in the way Facebook, Google and Amazon ended up. He wasn't proposing breaking it up as it is, which is what your comment assumes. However, as I said in another comment, they do have other products (Sora and others in the pipeline that are meaningfully separate from their core product). I'd agree it's too early to break them up (at least by conventional anti-trust standards), and that if anything, they should be regulated on other dimensions.

XorNot 1y ago

This is Bernie Sanders trying to do populism on a subject he doesn't know much about.