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All the frontier houses know this too. They also know it will be extremely difficult to raise more capital if their pitch is "we need to go back to research, wh
by mvkel 11mo ago
All the frontier houses know this too. They also know it will be extremely difficult to raise more capital if their pitch is "we need to go back to research, which might return nothing at all."
Ilya did also acknowledge that these houses will still generate gobs of revenue, despite being at a dead end, so I'm not sure what the criticism is, exactly.
Everyone knows another breakthrough is required for agi to arrive; sama explicitly said this. Do you wait and sit on your hands until that breakthrough arrives? Or make a lot of money while skating to where the puck will be?
- catigula 11mo agoSource? Everyone at anthropic is saying ASI is imminent…
- Fnoord 11mo agoReminds me of this commercial [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzakqMAaHME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzakqMAaHME
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- enraged_camel 11mo ago>> Everyone at anthropic is saying ASI is imminent… Who exactly is saying this, other than C-level people?
- bigstrat2003 11mo agoPeople at Anthropic have a vested interest in getting you to believe that they are creating new and exciting things. Of course they say that a breakthrough is imminent. Doesn't make it in the least true, though.
- stephc_int13 11mo agoI would say the issue is that most of the big AI players are burning a lot more cash than they earn, and the main thesis is that they are doing so because their product will be so huge that they will need 10x-100x infrastructure to support it. But what we're seeing at the moment, is a deceleration, not an acceleration.
- mvkel 11mo agoThere is no example of a leading company that ships a world-changing product, yet somehow runs out of cash. Maybe they lose relevance. Maybe they miss the breakthrough. That becomes the reason. So perplexity? Sure. Anthropic, even? Yep. Google? OpenAI? Nah. Regardless, viewing the unit economics, there are very clear sight lines to profitability if they want it. Just like with Amazon, Tesla, Apple, etc., when you want to grow, hoarding cash is a bad play.
- stephc_int13 11mo agoOpenAI is very unlikely to go bankrupt, but they could be in such a difficult financial position that they would have to make painful compromises with Microsoft and/or Nvidia and lose most of their leverage.
- mvkel 11mo agoMicrosoft, largest software company in the world, has (publicly and privately) admitted that it is in their best interest to ensure that OpenAI remains the leading ai company for at least the next seven years. As for nvidia, if OpenAI has less leverage, that necessitates a different ai company having more. Who would it be?
- stephc_int13 11mo agoNvidia. Believe it or not but they have their own robotics and AI plans, fully financed by their GPU division. They don’t intend to sell shovels forever.
- tim333 11mo ago>no example of a leading company that ships a world-changing product, yet somehow runs out of cash Concorde, Lotus 1-2-3, Compuserve, AOL, Yahoo, Polaroid...
- __loam 11mo agoRevenue isn't profit
- energy123 11mo agoA distinction that matters if the unit economics are bad, which nobody has full visibility over.
- epistasis 11mo agoNo matter the unit economics, commoditization and advancement of open models and small startups means that there is at almost a year or two to exploit competitive advantage. If scaling stops, the window to make a profit is extremely narrow.
- energy123 11mo agoWhich is an issue with unit economics.
- mvkel 11mo agoOpen models serve as a safeguard, not a competitor, to closed models. They still cost billions to pre-train
- epistasis 11mo agoTraining costs will come down, at a tremendous pace. They cost billions to train right now because people are willing to throw billions away to get to the goal first. Given more time, cheaper and more clever training methods will be found.
- Analemma_ 11mo agoGoogle made $35 billion in profit last quarter.
- mvkel 11mo agoCountless examples of a lack of profit not spelling the doom of a company (uber, amazon, tesla). Countless examples of companies that strive for profit too early, only to die
- octoberfranklin 11mo agoHouses? So we're rehypothecating CDOs like the last bubble?
- ares623 11mo agoI think OP means "The Great Houses of AI"