Fuck AI

4230 readers

609 users here now

"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"

A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

VerbFlow@lemmy.world

MrMcGasion@lemmy.world

TootSweet@lemmy.world

BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world

cynar@lemmy.world

drmeanfeel@lemmy.world

pavnilschanda@lemmy.world

CriticalMedicine@lemmy.world

WonderfulWanderer@lemmy.world

Communist@lemmy.ml

eatCasserole@lemmy.world

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world

NutWrench@lemmy.world

Soup@lemmy.cafe

iAvicenna@lemmy.world

Tinks@lemmy.world

wizblizz@lemmy.world

corus_kt@lemmy.world

Prandom_returns@lemm.ee

JimSamtanko@lemm.ee

TrickDacy@lemmy.world

TheFriar@lemm.ee

ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com

HawlSera@lemm.ee

andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works

MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works

33550336@lemmy.world

Nougat@fedia.io

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world

Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world

Quill7513@slrpnk.net

glowing_hans@sopuli.xyz

e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de

ThefuzzyFurryComrade@pawb.social

134

OpenAI Is Just Another Boring, Desperate AI Startup (www.wheresyoured.at)

submitted 1 day ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today I'm going to walk you through a fairly unique position: that OpenAI is just another boring AI startup lacking any meaningful product roadmap or strategy, using the press as a tool to pump its bags while very rarely delivering on what it’s promised. It is a company with massive amounts of cash, industrial backing, and brand recognition, and otherwise is, much like its customers, desperately trying to work out how to make money selling products built on top of Large Language Models.

OpenAI lives and dies on its mythology as the center of innovation in the world of AI, yet reality is so much more mediocre. Its revenue growth is slowing, its products are commoditized, its models are hardly state-of-the-art, the overall generative AI industry has lost its sheen, and its killer app is a mythology that has converted a handful of very rich people and very few others.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The $1 trillion number was floated not to scare investors, but to ward of competitors thinking to get in.
The OpenAI business model is to be one of the two (or only one) standing on the ash heap once the whole thing crashes and burns. That's how Google and Amazon ended up owning their markets, post-dotcom.
Once the only option, they'll optimize for services that generate the most revenue for the least investment and shut down all the miscellaneous side projects. The same way Google shuts down services when they don't hit the adoption numbers, users be damned.
When there's only one or two companies left and all the users of closed companies have migrated over, they can bump up their monthly price to 2x or 3x. Where else you gonna go?
Once the crash comes, whoever has the largest pile of cash becomes king and can pick up ready-to-roll data center infrastructure at fire-sale prices.

That's the long-term play, not how much they're making now.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 5 points 20 hours ago

What choice do we have? Ah, the open source ones... And of course not even using AI is a worthwhile move for many businesses in the world today. We're seeing negative return on attempted deployment from many (but certainly not all) companies, right? So expect less AI, is what I would say.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

The $1 trillion number was floated not to scare investors, but to ward of competitors thinking to get in.

I suspect it was both. OpenAI is burning through cash at a rate that's completely unprecedented, and the only way to keep that going is with a constant influx of VC money. Either that, or start turning a profit... but that's about as likely as aliens arriving and fixing all of our problems.