3 ms·

The labs have fully embraced the cutthroat competition, the arms race has fully shed the civilized facade of beneficient mutual cooperation. Dirty tricks and u

The labs have fully embraced the cutthroat competition, the arms race has fully shed the civilized facade of beneficient mutual cooperation. Dirty tricks and underhanded tactics will happen - I think Demis isn't savvy in this domain, but might end up stomping out the competition on pure performance. Elon, Sam, and Dario know how to fight ugly and do the nasty political boardroom crap. 26 is gonna be a very dramatic year, lots of cinematic potential for the eventual AI biopics.

manquer 9mo ago
>civilized facade of mutual cooperation >Dirty tricks and underhanded tactics As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers.
- thethimble 9mo ago
  The consumers are getting huge wins. Model costs continue to collapse while capability improves. Competition is fantastic.
  - mrandish 9mo ago
    > The consumers are getting huge wins. However, the investors currently subsidizing those wins to below cost may be getting huge losses.
    - credit_guy 9mo ago
      Yes, but that's the nature of the game, and they know it.
  - doom2 9mo ago
    > Model costs continue to collapse And yet RAM prices are still sky high. Game consoles are getting more expensive, not cheaper, as a result. When will competition benefit those consumers? Or consumers of desktop RAM?
    - nasreddin 9mo ago
      The free market has simply decided these consumers are not as relevant as the others.
      - niek_pas 9mo ago
        Maybe the free market is wrong.
        anomaly_ 9mo ago
        It can’t be. Those uses are suboptimal, hence the users aren’t willing to pay the new prices.
      - acjohnson55 9mo ago
        Not really. Investors with hundreds of billions of dollars have decided it. The process by which capital has been allocated the way it has isn't some mathematically natural or optimal thing. Our market is far from free.
        ETH_start 9mo ago
        Saying "investors with hundreds of billions decided it" makes it sound like a few people just chose the outcome, when in reality prices and capital move because millions of consumers, companies, workers, and smaller investors keep making choices every day. Big investors only make money if their decisions match what people actually want; they can't just command success. If they guess wrong, others profit by allocating money better, so having influence isn't the same as having control. The system isn't mathematically perfect, but that doesn't make it arbitrary. It works through an evolutionary process: bad bets lose money, better ones gain more resources. Any claim that the outcome is suboptimal only really means something if the claimant can point to a specific alternative that would reliably do better under the same conditions. Otherwise critics are mostly just expressing personal frustration with the outcome.
- ajam1507 9mo ago
  > As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers. The implicit assumption here is that we have constructed our laws so skillfully that the only path to win a free market competition is by producing a better product, or that all efforts will be spent doing so. This is never the case. It should be self-evident from this that there is a more productive way for companies to compete and our laws are not sufficient to create the conditions.
- dwaltrip 9mo ago
  Sure, it can be beneficial. But don't forget that externalities are a thing.
- wiz21c 9mo ago
  in the short term maybe, in the long term it depends how many winners you have. If only two, the market will be a duopoly. Customers will get better AI but will have zero power over the way the AI is produced or consumed (i.e. cO2 emission, ethics, etc will be burnt)
  - manquer 9mo ago
    > how many winners ... duopoly There aren't any insurmountable large moats, plenty of open weight models that perform close enough. > CO₂ emissions Different industry that could also benefit from more competition ? Clean(er) energy is not even more expensive than dirty sources on pure $/kWh, we still do need dirty sources for workloads like base demand, peakers etc that the cheap clean sources cannot service today.
- KoolKat23 9mo ago
  Yes, but not cutthroat competition that implies unsustainable, detrimental competition that kills off the industry.
webdevver 9mo ago
demis is more than qualified. he was politically savvy enough to stay in control of deepmind when it was acquired by google, thats up there with the altman fiasco a year or two ago.

manquer 9mo ago

>civilized facade of mutual cooperation >Dirty tricks and underhanded tactics As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers.

thethimble 9mo ago
The consumers are getting huge wins. Model costs continue to collapse while capability improves. Competition is fantastic.
- mrandish 9mo ago
  > The consumers are getting huge wins. However, the investors currently subsidizing those wins to below cost may be getting huge losses.
  - credit_guy 9mo ago
    Yes, but that's the nature of the game, and they know it.
- doom2 9mo ago
  > Model costs continue to collapse And yet RAM prices are still sky high. Game consoles are getting more expensive, not cheaper, as a result. When will competition benefit those consumers? Or consumers of desktop RAM?
  - nasreddin 9mo ago
    The free market has simply decided these consumers are not as relevant as the others.
    - niek_pas 9mo ago
      Maybe the free market is wrong.
      - anomaly_ 9mo ago
        It can’t be. Those uses are suboptimal, hence the users aren’t willing to pay the new prices.
    - acjohnson55 9mo ago
      Not really. Investors with hundreds of billions of dollars have decided it. The process by which capital has been allocated the way it has isn't some mathematically natural or optimal thing. Our market is far from free.
      - ETH_start 9mo ago
        Saying "investors with hundreds of billions decided it" makes it sound like a few people just chose the outcome, when in reality prices and capital move because millions of consumers, companies, workers, and smaller investors keep making choices every day. Big investors only make money if their decisions match what people actually want; they can't just command success. If they guess wrong, others profit by allocating money better, so having influence isn't the same as having control. The system isn't mathematically perfect, but that doesn't make it arbitrary. It works through an evolutionary process: bad bets lose money, better ones gain more resources. Any claim that the outcome is suboptimal only really means something if the claimant can point to a specific alternative that would reliably do better under the same conditions. Otherwise critics are mostly just expressing personal frustration with the outcome.
ajam1507 9mo ago
> As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers. The implicit assumption here is that we have constructed our laws so skillfully that the only path to win a free market competition is by producing a better product, or that all efforts will be spent doing so. This is never the case. It should be self-evident from this that there is a more productive way for companies to compete and our laws are not sufficient to create the conditions.
dwaltrip 9mo ago
Sure, it can be beneficial. But don't forget that externalities are a thing.
wiz21c 9mo ago
in the short term maybe, in the long term it depends how many winners you have. If only two, the market will be a duopoly. Customers will get better AI but will have zero power over the way the AI is produced or consumed (i.e. cO2 emission, ethics, etc will be burnt)
- manquer 9mo ago
  > how many winners ... duopoly There aren't any insurmountable large moats, plenty of open weight models that perform close enough. > CO₂ emissions Different industry that could also benefit from more competition ? Clean(er) energy is not even more expensive than dirty sources on pure $/kWh, we still do need dirty sources for workloads like base demand, peakers etc that the cheap clean sources cannot service today.
KoolKat23 9mo ago
Yes, but not cutthroat competition that implies unsustainable, detrimental competition that kills off the industry.

webdevver 9mo ago

demis is more than qualified. he was politically savvy enough to stay in control of deepmind when it was acquired by google, thats up there with the altman fiasco a year or two ago.