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It's mathematically impossible what OpenAI is promising. They know it. The goal is to be too big to fail and get bailed out by US taxpayers who have been groome

It's mathematically impossible what OpenAI is promising. They know it. The goal is to be too big to fail and get bailed out by US taxpayers who have been groomed into viewing AI as a cold war style arms race that America cannot lose.

senshan 10mo ago
> It's mathematically impossible what OpenAI is promising Citation is needed
- testing22321 10mo ago
  Don’t that have to make more money in the next 10 years than any company ever has… and that is just to break even. It’s going to crash, guaranteed
  - senshan 10mo ago
    It is the term "mathematically impossible" that caught my attention. Since it is about the future promise of OpenAI, one could debate the likelihood or "statistically improbable", but "mathematically impossible" implies some calculation, proof and certainty. Hence my curiosity.
    - CharlieDigital 10mo ago
      I've seen some calculation I think from an HSBC analyst that it would take a monthly subscription of $200/mo. from some large portion of the US population for some insane number of years to break even.
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        > from some large portion of the US population What a silly calculation. OpenAI’s customer base is global. Using US population as the customer base is deliberately missing the big picture. The world population is more than 20X larger than the US population. It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. It’s not reasonable to expect consumers to drive demand for these services.
        johnnyanmac 10mo ago
        >OpenAI’s customer base is global. I'd be willing to bet that, like many US websites, OpenAI's users are at lest 60% American. Just because there's 20x more people out there doesn't mean they have the same exposure to American products. For instance, China is an obvious one. So that's 35%+ of the population already mostly out of consideration. >It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. I don't think a few thousand companies can outspend 200m users paying $200 a month. I won't call it a "mathematical impossibility", but the math also isn't math-ing here.
        Marsymars 10mo ago
        Even if you grant that OpenAI might be as successful as Apple at international expansion and support, that’s still only a non-US market about double the size of the US market.
        consp 10mo ago
        > OpenAI’s customer base is global. Since when is English everyone's primary language?
        eisfresser 10mo ago
        ChatGPT is totally fluid in German and French (i.e.), their market size is my no means limited to the anglosphere.
doctorpangloss 10mo ago
on the one hand, i understand you are making a stylized comment, on the other hand, as soon as i started writing something reasonable, i realized this is an "upvote lame catastrophizing takes about" (checking my notes) "some company" thread, which means reasonable stuff will get downvoted... for example, where is there actual scarcity in their product inputs? for example, will they really be paying retail prices to infrastructure providers forever? is that a valid forecast? many reasonable ways to look at this. even if i take your cynical stuff at 100% face value, the thing about bailouts is that they're more complicated than what you are saying, but your instinct is to say they're not complicated, "grooming" this and "cold war" that, because your goal is to concern troll, not advance this site's goal of curiosity...
- krupan 10mo ago
  They've already spent so much money that even if they get any new hardware at a deep discount they will have a very hard time breaking even
bloppe 10mo ago
Bailing out OAI would be entirely unnecessary (crowded field) and political suicide (how many hundreds of billions that could have gone to health care instead?) If it happens in the next 3 years, tho, and Altman promises enough pork to the man, it could happen.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  This administration has "committed political suicide" dozens of times this year. What's one more to add to the pile?
- jjulius 10mo ago
  >Bailing out OAI would be ... political suicide (how many hundreds of billions that could have gone to health care instead?) Not that I have an opinion one way or another regarding whether or not they'd be bailed out, but this particular argument doesn't really seem to fit the current political landscape.
Aurornis 10mo ago
> The goal is to be too big to fail and get bailed out by US taxpayers I know this is the latest catastrophizion meme for AI companies, but what is it even supposed to mean? OpenAI failing wouldn’t mean AI disappears and all of their customers go bankrupt, too. It’s not like a bank. If OpenAI became insolvent or declared bankruptcy, their intellectual property wouldn’t disappear or become useless. Someone would purchase it and run it again under a new company. We also have multiple AI companies and switching costs are not that high for customers, although some adjustment is necessary when changing models. I don’t even know what people think this is supposed to mean. The US government gives them money for something to prevent them from filing for bankruptcy? The analogy to bank bailouts doesn’t hold.
- liamconnell 10mo ago
  > Someone would purchase it and run it again under a new company. That happened a long time ago! Microsoft already owns the model weights!
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >I know this is the latest catastrophizion meme for AI companies, but what is it even supposed to mean? Someone else put it succintly. "When A million dollar company fails, it's their problem. When a billion dollar company fails, it's our problem" In essence, there's so much investment in AI that it's a significant part of the US GDP. If AI falters, that is something that the entire stock market will feel, and by effect, all Americans. No matter how detached from tech they are. In other words, the potential for the another great depression. In that regard, the government wants to avoid that. So they will at least give a small bailout to lessen the crash. But more likely (as seen with the Great Financial Crisis), they will likely supply billions upon billions to prop up companies that by all business logic deserved to fail. Because the alternative would be too politically damaging to tolerate. ---- That's the theory. These all aren't certain and there are arguments to suggest that a crash in AI wouldn't be as bad as any of the aforementioned crashes. But that's what people mean by "become too big to fail and get bailed out".
  - zozbot234 10mo ago
throw-12-16 10mo ago
Unlikely, Elon bought the presidency and owns a competitor.

senshan 10mo ago

> It's mathematically impossible what OpenAI is promising Citation is needed

testing22321 10mo ago
Don’t that have to make more money in the next 10 years than any company ever has… and that is just to break even. It’s going to crash, guaranteed
- senshan 10mo ago
  It is the term "mathematically impossible" that caught my attention. Since it is about the future promise of OpenAI, one could debate the likelihood or "statistically improbable", but "mathematically impossible" implies some calculation, proof and certainty. Hence my curiosity.
  - CharlieDigital 10mo ago
    I've seen some calculation I think from an HSBC analyst that it would take a monthly subscription of $200/mo. from some large portion of the US population for some insane number of years to break even.
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      > from some large portion of the US population What a silly calculation. OpenAI’s customer base is global. Using US population as the customer base is deliberately missing the big picture. The world population is more than 20X larger than the US population. It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. It’s not reasonable to expect consumers to drive demand for these services.
      - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
        >OpenAI’s customer base is global. I'd be willing to bet that, like many US websites, OpenAI's users are at lest 60% American. Just because there's 20x more people out there doesn't mean they have the same exposure to American products. For instance, China is an obvious one. So that's 35%+ of the population already mostly out of consideration. >It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. I don't think a few thousand companies can outspend 200m users paying $200 a month. I won't call it a "mathematical impossibility", but the math also isn't math-ing here.
        Marsymars 10mo ago
        Even if you grant that OpenAI might be as successful as Apple at international expansion and support, that’s still only a non-US market about double the size of the US market.
      - consp 10mo ago
        > OpenAI’s customer base is global. Since when is English everyone's primary language?
        eisfresser 10mo ago
        ChatGPT is totally fluid in German and French (i.e.), their market size is my no means limited to the anglosphere.

doctorpangloss 10mo ago

on the one hand, i understand you are making a stylized comment, on the other hand, as soon as i started writing something reasonable, i realized this is an "upvote lame catastrophizing takes about" (checking my notes) "some company" thread, which means reasonable stuff will get downvoted... for example, where is there actual scarcity in their product inputs? for example, will they really be paying retail prices to infrastructure providers forever? is that a valid forecast? many reasonable ways to look at this. even if i take your cynical stuff at 100% face value, the thing about bailouts is that they're more complicated than what you are saying, but your instinct is to say they're not complicated, "grooming" this and "cold war" that, because your goal is to concern troll, not advance this site's goal of curiosity...

krupan 10mo ago
They've already spent so much money that even if they get any new hardware at a deep discount they will have a very hard time breaking even

bloppe 10mo ago

Bailing out OAI would be entirely unnecessary (crowded field) and political suicide (how many hundreds of billions that could have gone to health care instead?) If it happens in the next 3 years, tho, and Altman promises enough pork to the man, it could happen.

johnnyanmac 10mo ago
This administration has "committed political suicide" dozens of times this year. What's one more to add to the pile?
jjulius 10mo ago
>Bailing out OAI would be ... political suicide (how many hundreds of billions that could have gone to health care instead?) Not that I have an opinion one way or another regarding whether or not they'd be bailed out, but this particular argument doesn't really seem to fit the current political landscape.

Aurornis 10mo ago

> The goal is to be too big to fail and get bailed out by US taxpayers I know this is the latest catastrophizion meme for AI companies, but what is it even supposed to mean? OpenAI failing wouldn’t mean AI disappears and all of their customers go bankrupt, too. It’s not like a bank. If OpenAI became insolvent or declared bankruptcy, their intellectual property wouldn’t disappear or become useless. Someone would purchase it and run it again under a new company. We also have multiple AI companies and switching costs are not that high for customers, although some adjustment is necessary when changing models. I don’t even know what people think this is supposed to mean. The US government gives them money for something to prevent them from filing for bankruptcy? The analogy to bank bailouts doesn’t hold.

liamconnell 10mo ago
> Someone would purchase it and run it again under a new company. That happened a long time ago! Microsoft already owns the model weights!
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
>I know this is the latest catastrophizion meme for AI companies, but what is it even supposed to mean? Someone else put it succintly. "When A million dollar company fails, it's their problem. When a billion dollar company fails, it's our problem" In essence, there's so much investment in AI that it's a significant part of the US GDP. If AI falters, that is something that the entire stock market will feel, and by effect, all Americans. No matter how detached from tech they are. In other words, the potential for the another great depression. In that regard, the government wants to avoid that. So they will at least give a small bailout to lessen the crash. But more likely (as seen with the Great Financial Crisis), they will likely supply billions upon billions to prop up companies that by all business logic deserved to fail. Because the alternative would be too politically damaging to tolerate. ---- That's the theory. These all aren't certain and there are arguments to suggest that a crash in AI wouldn't be as bad as any of the aforementioned crashes. But that's what people mean by "become too big to fail and get bailed out".
- zozbot234 10mo ago

throw-12-16 10mo ago

Unlikely, Elon bought the presidency and owns a competitor.