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To some extend I think people are putting way to much weight on his exact words, and not why he says them. Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies,

To some extend I think people are putting way to much weight on his exact words, and not why he says them. Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies, so now he starts slinging random arguments that can't stand up to even the briefest of scrutiny. OpenAI is burning cash and fuel. There are results, and they are, to some extend, impressive, but not impressive enough to justify the cost and Altman are no longer able to cover that up.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
LatencyKills 8mo ago
I knew OpenAI was in trouble the instant they chose Altman over Ilya Sutskever.
- aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
  > I knew OpenAI was in trouble the instant they chose Altman over Ilya Sutskever. I am not so sure: This decision rather tells something important about the priorities of the string-pullers behind the curtain: They clearly want(ed) to monetize what is there, with the risk that only smaller improvements for the AI models will happen from OpenAI, and thus OpenAI might get outcompeted by competitors who are capable of building and running a much better model. If this is the priority (no matter whether you like or despise Sam Altman), you will likely prefer Sam Altman over Ilya Sutskever. If, on the other hand, a fast monetization is less important than making further huge leaps towards much better AI models, you will, of course, strongly prefer Ilya Sutskever over Sam Altman. Thus, I wouldn't say that choosing Sam Altman over Ilya Sutskever is a sign that OpenAI is in trouble, but a very strong sign where the string-pullers behind the curtain want OpenAI to be. Both Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever are just marionettes for these string pullers. When they have served their role, they get put back into the box.
  - rustyhancock 8mo ago
    Yes I agree. Altman was the rational choice if you realise that eventually the huge R&D bill will need to stop for atleast a moderate period (<5 years). You want to ride that out before capitalising on the eventual cheaper training costs once the rug has been pulled. Altman has already succeeded here as it seems inference for API and chat is profitable but offset with massive R&D costs.
    - sjaiisba 8mo ago
      All your competitors benefit from your training costs. They’ll lose on inference pretty quickly if they stop training new models, no?
      - rustyhancock 8mo ago
        I don't think they will lose on inference because that assumes that compute becomes cheap for all evenly. Their spending today has secured their compute for the near future. If every GPU, stick for RAM and SSD is already paid for. Who can afford to sell cheap inference? Z.ai is trying to deal with this by using domestic (basically Huwawei silicon not Nvidia). And with their state subsidy they will do well. Anthropic has a 50bn USD plan to build data centres for 2026. OpenAI similarly has secured extraordinary amounts of other people's money for data centres. All these will be sunk costs and "other people's money" while money is easy to get hold off. But will be a moat when R&D ends. Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI), and who you end up with (say people who use Gemini because they have a Google 2TB account). Some upstart can put themselves into the ground borrowing compute and selling at a loss but the moment they catch up and need to raise prices everyone will simply leave. ChatGPT is what is most likely to remain a sustained frontier model. Maybe Claude jumps ahead further a few times, Gemini will have its moment. But it'll all be a wash with ChatGPT tittering along as rarely the best. But never the worst.
        ethbr1 8mo ago
        > Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI) Imho, people are undervaluing the last mile connection to the customer. The last Western megacorp to bootstrap its way there was Facebook, and control over cloud identity and data was much less centralized circa-late-00s. The real clock OpenAI is running against is creating a durable consumer last-mile connection (killer app, device, etc). "Easy to use chat app / coding tool" doesn't even begin to approach the durability of Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Meta. And without it, OpenAI risks any one of them pulling an Apple Maps at any time. Unless it continually plows money into R&D to maintain the lead and doesn't pull an Intel and miss a beat. Maybe they do, but that's a lot of coin flips that need to continually come up heads, in perpetuity.
gizajob 8mo ago
There’s running out of words and there’s coming across like a complete psychopath who has lost all perspective.
rustyhancock 8mo ago
My understanding is that subscription based inference and API usage is now profitable. Subscriptions are highly profitable for the typical chat user. And API is overall net profitable. What is extremely taxing to their finances is R&D, training and in particular development of frontier models. My assessment is that when the music stops those who have the most subs will win. Companies like Apple who had sat out the battle and built niche moats (privacy), and companies like OpenAI and Anthropic who have the market share will be fine. In 6-12 months, nearly any lead they have will be eaten by distillation. What will then happen is they will lose subscriptions to services which offer AI as a tack on like Gemini with Googles regular cloud subscriptions. This will continue. Companies like Apple will have deep pockets to move on the businesses that go underwater and then can restart training in a much less congested market. All this is assuming a relatively graceful collapse but that is what's likely given how aware everyone is that the bubble must pop. Training costs will fall. Companies like Nvidia and other shovel businesses (i.e. selling GPUs and not using them) mostly have their revenue secured with funding from the present. What I see as confirmations of this pattern is if we stop getting ground busting frontier models and then coast for 3-5 years when competition becomes more incremental. This is an unpopular opinion, Will OpenAI go bust? No chance. Nor will Anthropic.
- noduerme 8mo ago
  I'm a bit of an Apple optimist for this exact reason. I think the moat is collapsing, and Apple is best positioned to dispatch their own models in a year on their own widely sold consumer hardware, unless someone has a breakthrough which they can't replicate. Which I don't anticipate. I'm not really sure what OpenAI's moat is. Anthropic has a chance being so widely accepted by developers, and being a bit better at developing models when it comes to code.
- mrweasel 8mo ago
  It probably doesn't matter that subscriptions are profitable, when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%. I sort of agree with you, not that it's the most subscriptions necessarily that will be the deciding factor, but the there's going to be some companies better positioned to survive when the free money stops. OpenAI has the brand, so that might help, but mostly I think they'll get absorbed into Microsoft. I don't think they can stand on their own. It doesn't seem like a particularly well managed company, so to me it makes more sense that they are simply acquired for pennies on the dollar by someone with better leadership.
password54321 8mo ago
People might not want to hear this but AI is already smarter and more useful than most people ever will be. We are not even talking about by the end of the year or decade anymore.
- poisonborz 8mo ago
  Read and think about what you wrote. How can an ai, completing specific scoped tasks, be in any way comparable to the scale of a human life? Maybe the same thing these execs forgot.
  - password54321 8mo ago
    I am comparing competency not the "scale of a human life" or whatever that is supposed to mean. AI still lacks taste so it is still hard to replace human originality or creativity but that's almost it when it comes to work that can be done on a computer. It will very clearly surpass everyone in verifiable domains and already has surpassed most people. We are already at that point where we just don't fully know what to do with what we already have and simply haven't fully internalised it. But all it will take is one economic shakeup to redistribute human intelligence from what we are familiar with.
  - fernandopj 8mo ago
    That is the crux of the problem we're facing as a society: many, many leaders have this idea that they are better served by an AI that is 70% (?), 80% (?) correct when helping them make decisions about their business, than trusting humans - consultants, employees, pundits - that they don't even trust their judgments, bias, own goals, much less paying them. For those people, an AI better (much better?) than a coin toss is the goal, if it means not relying on people. Personally, I already deal weekly with people that veemently antagonizes every line of thinking if it isn't what ChatGPT told them before a meeting.
    - ethbr1 8mo ago
      The root issue is epistemological. If one puts their faith in answers that come out of a black box, then one must justify the black box's omniscience, specifically by prioritizing it above human intellect and deprioritizing attempts to reason through its logic. You saw it with older people blindly following sat navs because they'd forgotten how to navigate. And those were much less believable sounding devices! It's not going to stop until/if the first execs are thrown in jail because the 'I just trusted AI' defense fails.
f30e3dfed1c9 8mo ago
> Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies Oh I doubt that! The quality of the lies may deteriorate but he ain't ever gonna run out.
duxup 8mo ago
I think he's also slinging random business deals too. The "A letter from Sam & Jony" page is one of the weirdest I've seen in a while: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/ https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/ Step after step it seems like a CEO throwing everything at the wall in an insecure manner. I don't pretend to know if Open AI is doomed or just absurdly over valued but still valuable. I pay for and use their product, it works for my use cases, but watching the business deals and weird quotes from a far makes me less confidant.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

LatencyKills 8mo ago

I knew OpenAI was in trouble the instant they chose Altman over Ilya Sutskever.

aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
> I knew OpenAI was in trouble the instant they chose Altman over Ilya Sutskever. I am not so sure: This decision rather tells something important about the priorities of the string-pullers behind the curtain: They clearly want(ed) to monetize what is there, with the risk that only smaller improvements for the AI models will happen from OpenAI, and thus OpenAI might get outcompeted by competitors who are capable of building and running a much better model. If this is the priority (no matter whether you like or despise Sam Altman), you will likely prefer Sam Altman over Ilya Sutskever. If, on the other hand, a fast monetization is less important than making further huge leaps towards much better AI models, you will, of course, strongly prefer Ilya Sutskever over Sam Altman. Thus, I wouldn't say that choosing Sam Altman over Ilya Sutskever is a sign that OpenAI is in trouble, but a very strong sign where the string-pullers behind the curtain want OpenAI to be. Both Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever are just marionettes for these string pullers. When they have served their role, they get put back into the box.
- rustyhancock 8mo ago
  Yes I agree. Altman was the rational choice if you realise that eventually the huge R&D bill will need to stop for atleast a moderate period (<5 years). You want to ride that out before capitalising on the eventual cheaper training costs once the rug has been pulled. Altman has already succeeded here as it seems inference for API and chat is profitable but offset with massive R&D costs.
  - sjaiisba 8mo ago
    All your competitors benefit from your training costs. They’ll lose on inference pretty quickly if they stop training new models, no?
    - rustyhancock 8mo ago
      I don't think they will lose on inference because that assumes that compute becomes cheap for all evenly. Their spending today has secured their compute for the near future. If every GPU, stick for RAM and SSD is already paid for. Who can afford to sell cheap inference? Z.ai is trying to deal with this by using domestic (basically Huwawei silicon not Nvidia). And with their state subsidy they will do well. Anthropic has a 50bn USD plan to build data centres for 2026. OpenAI similarly has secured extraordinary amounts of other people's money for data centres. All these will be sunk costs and "other people's money" while money is easy to get hold off. But will be a moat when R&D ends. Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI), and who you end up with (say people who use Gemini because they have a Google 2TB account). Some upstart can put themselves into the ground borrowing compute and selling at a loss but the moment they catch up and need to raise prices everyone will simply leave. ChatGPT is what is most likely to remain a sustained frontier model. Maybe Claude jumps ahead further a few times, Gemini will have its moment. But it'll all be a wash with ChatGPT tittering along as rarely the best. But never the worst.
      - ethbr1 8mo ago
        > Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI) Imho, people are undervaluing the last mile connection to the customer. The last Western megacorp to bootstrap its way there was Facebook, and control over cloud identity and data was much less centralized circa-late-00s. The real clock OpenAI is running against is creating a durable consumer last-mile connection (killer app, device, etc). "Easy to use chat app / coding tool" doesn't even begin to approach the durability of Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Meta. And without it, OpenAI risks any one of them pulling an Apple Maps at any time. Unless it continually plows money into R&D to maintain the lead and doesn't pull an Intel and miss a beat. Maybe they do, but that's a lot of coin flips that need to continually come up heads, in perpetuity.

gizajob 8mo ago

There’s running out of words and there’s coming across like a complete psychopath who has lost all perspective.

rustyhancock 8mo ago

My understanding is that subscription based inference and API usage is now profitable. Subscriptions are highly profitable for the typical chat user. And API is overall net profitable. What is extremely taxing to their finances is R&D, training and in particular development of frontier models. My assessment is that when the music stops those who have the most subs will win. Companies like Apple who had sat out the battle and built niche moats (privacy), and companies like OpenAI and Anthropic who have the market share will be fine. In 6-12 months, nearly any lead they have will be eaten by distillation. What will then happen is they will lose subscriptions to services which offer AI as a tack on like Gemini with Googles regular cloud subscriptions. This will continue. Companies like Apple will have deep pockets to move on the businesses that go underwater and then can restart training in a much less congested market. All this is assuming a relatively graceful collapse but that is what's likely given how aware everyone is that the bubble must pop. Training costs will fall. Companies like Nvidia and other shovel businesses (i.e. selling GPUs and not using them) mostly have their revenue secured with funding from the present. What I see as confirmations of this pattern is if we stop getting ground busting frontier models and then coast for 3-5 years when competition becomes more incremental. This is an unpopular opinion, Will OpenAI go bust? No chance. Nor will Anthropic.

noduerme 8mo ago
I'm a bit of an Apple optimist for this exact reason. I think the moat is collapsing, and Apple is best positioned to dispatch their own models in a year on their own widely sold consumer hardware, unless someone has a breakthrough which they can't replicate. Which I don't anticipate. I'm not really sure what OpenAI's moat is. Anthropic has a chance being so widely accepted by developers, and being a bit better at developing models when it comes to code.
mrweasel 8mo ago
It probably doesn't matter that subscriptions are profitable, when some estimates put the number of users in the free tier at 96%. I sort of agree with you, not that it's the most subscriptions necessarily that will be the deciding factor, but the there's going to be some companies better positioned to survive when the free money stops. OpenAI has the brand, so that might help, but mostly I think they'll get absorbed into Microsoft. I don't think they can stand on their own. It doesn't seem like a particularly well managed company, so to me it makes more sense that they are simply acquired for pennies on the dollar by someone with better leadership.

password54321 8mo ago

People might not want to hear this but AI is already smarter and more useful than most people ever will be. We are not even talking about by the end of the year or decade anymore.

poisonborz 8mo ago
Read and think about what you wrote. How can an ai, completing specific scoped tasks, be in any way comparable to the scale of a human life? Maybe the same thing these execs forgot.
- password54321 8mo ago
  I am comparing competency not the "scale of a human life" or whatever that is supposed to mean. AI still lacks taste so it is still hard to replace human originality or creativity but that's almost it when it comes to work that can be done on a computer. It will very clearly surpass everyone in verifiable domains and already has surpassed most people. We are already at that point where we just don't fully know what to do with what we already have and simply haven't fully internalised it. But all it will take is one economic shakeup to redistribute human intelligence from what we are familiar with.
- fernandopj 8mo ago
  That is the crux of the problem we're facing as a society: many, many leaders have this idea that they are better served by an AI that is 70% (?), 80% (?) correct when helping them make decisions about their business, than trusting humans - consultants, employees, pundits - that they don't even trust their judgments, bias, own goals, much less paying them. For those people, an AI better (much better?) than a coin toss is the goal, if it means not relying on people. Personally, I already deal weekly with people that veemently antagonizes every line of thinking if it isn't what ChatGPT told them before a meeting.
  - ethbr1 8mo ago
    The root issue is epistemological. If one puts their faith in answers that come out of a black box, then one must justify the black box's omniscience, specifically by prioritizing it above human intellect and deprioritizing attempts to reason through its logic. You saw it with older people blindly following sat navs because they'd forgotten how to navigate. And those were much less believable sounding devices! It's not going to stop until/if the first execs are thrown in jail because the 'I just trusted AI' defense fails.

f30e3dfed1c9 8mo ago

> Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies Oh I doubt that! The quality of the lies may deteriorate but he ain't ever gonna run out.

duxup 8mo ago

I think he's also slinging random business deals too. The "A letter from Sam & Jony" page is one of the weirdest I've seen in a while: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/ https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/ Step after step it seems like a CEO throwing everything at the wall in an insecure manner. I don't pretend to know if Open AI is doomed or just absurdly over valued but still valuable. I pay for and use their product, it works for my use cases, but watching the business deals and weird quotes from a far makes me less confidant.