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Google is winning on every AI front

(www.thealgorithmicbridge.com)
993 points vinhnx | 25 comments | 12 Apr 25 03:58 UTC | HN request time: 1.206s | source | bottom
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codelord ◴[12 Apr 25 06:51 UTC] No.43661966[source]▶
As an Ex-OpenAI employee I agree with this. Most of the top ML talent at OpenAI already have left to either do their own thing or join other startups. A few are still there but I doubt if they'll be around in a year. The main successful product from OpenAI is the ChatGPT app, but there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free and ads would become the main option to make money out of chatbots. The whole time that I was at OpenAI until now GOOG has been the only individual stock that I've been holding. Despite the threat to their search business I think they'll bounce back because they have a lot of cards to play. OpenAI is an annoyance for Google, because they are willing to burn money to get users. Google can't as easily burn money, since they already have billions of users, but also they are a public company and have to answer to investors. But I doubt if OpenAI investors would sign up to give more money to be burned in a year. Google just needs to ease off on the red tape and make their innovations available to users as fast as they can. (And don't let me get started with Sam Altman.)
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netcan ◴[12 Apr 25 09:17 UTC] No.43662766[source]▶
> there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free and ads would become the main option to make money out of chatbots.

So... I don't think this is certain. A surprising number of people pay for the ChatGPT app and/or competitors. It's be a >$10bn business already. Could maybe be a >$100bn business long term.

Meanwhile... making money from online ads isn't trivial. When the advertising model works well (eg search/adwords), it is a money faucet. But... it can be very hard to get that money faucet going. No guarantees that Google discover a meaningful business model here... and the innovators' dilema is strong.

Also, Google don't have a great history of getting new businesses up and running regardless of tech chops and timing. Google were pioneers to cloud computing... but amazon and MSFT built better businesses.

At this point, everyone is assuming AI will resolve to a "winner-take-most" game that is all about network effect, scale, barriers to entry and such. Maybe it isn't. Or... maybe LLMs themselves are commodities like ISPs.

The actual business models, at this point, aren't even known.

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1. dcow ◴[12 Apr 25 13:33 UTC] No.43664234[source]▶
I don’t think “AI” as a market is “winner-takes-anything”. Seriously. AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products. The winners will be other businesses that use AI tooling to make better products. Does OpenAI really make sense as a chatbot company?
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2. baby_souffle ◴[12 Apr 25 14:25 UTC] No.43664658[source]▶
> Does OpenAI really make sense as a chatbot company?

If the chat bot remains useful and can execute on instructions, yes.

If we see a plateau in integrations or abilities, it’ll stagnate.

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3. mistrial9 ◴[12 Apr 25 14:32 UTC] No.43664716[source]▶
the subscription is a product
4. ◴[12 Apr 25 14:48 UTC] No.43664855[source]▶
5. nothercastle ◴[12 Apr 25 15:29 UTC] No.43665228[source]▶
I agree the market for 10% better AI isn’t that great but the cost to get there is. An 80% as good model at 10% or even 5% the cost will win every time in the current environment. Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect
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6. jnwatson ◴[12 Apr 25 15:46 UTC] No.43665384[source]▶
AI is a product when you slap an API on top and host it for other businesses to figure out a use case.

In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living.

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7. tom_m ◴[12 Apr 25 16:22 UTC] No.43665753[source]▶
Very few are successful in this position. Zapier comes to mind, but it seems like a tiring business model to me.
8. kirubakaran ◴[12 Apr 25 16:39 UTC] No.43665933[source]▶
> In a gold rush, the folks that sell pickaxes make a reliable living.

Not necessarily. Even the original gold rush pickaxe guy Sam Brannan went broke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan

Sam of the current gold rush is selling pickaxes at a loss, telling the investors they'll make it up in volume.

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9. empiko ◴[12 Apr 25 16:59 UTC] No.43666104[source]▶
I don't think there is anybody that is making significant amount of money by selling tokens right now.
10. eximius ◴[12 Apr 25 17:55 UTC] No.43666547[source]▶
Is Amazon a product or a place to sell other products? Does that make Amazon not a winner?
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11. dcow ◴[12 Apr 25 17:59 UTC] No.43666590[source]▶
If there were 2 other Amazons all with similar products and the same ease of shipping would you care where you purchased? Amazon is simply the best UX for online ordering. If anything else matched it I’d shop platform agnostic.
12. dcow ◴[12 Apr 25 18:00 UTC] No.43666594[source]▶
Nvidia is selling the shovels.
13. mikeocool ◴[12 Apr 25 18:01 UTC] No.43666605[source]▶
Basically every tech company likes to say they are selling pickaxes, but basically no VC funded company matches that model. To actually come out ahead selling pickaxes you had to pocket a profit on each one you sold.

If you sell your pickaxes at a loss to gain market share, or pour all of your revenue into rapid pickaxe store expansion, you’re going to be just as broke as prospectors when the boom goes bust.

14. jart ◴[12 Apr 25 18:18 UTC] No.43666744[source]▶
Seriously, humans are not a product. You hire them for building products.
15. pixl97 ◴[12 Apr 25 18:25 UTC] No.43666791{3}[source]▶
Nvidia is selling GPUs at a loss? TSMC is going broke?

I'm pretty sure they are the pickaxe manufactures in this case.

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16. prewett ◴[12 Apr 25 19:05 UTC] No.43667084{3}[source]▶
According to the linked Wikipedia article, he did not go broke from the gold rush. He went broke because he invested the pickaxe windfall in land, and when his wife divorced him, the judge ruled he had to pay her 50%, but since he was 100% in land he had to sell it. (The article is not clear why he couldn't deed her 50% of it, or only sell 50%. Maybe it happened during a bad market, he had a deadline, etc.)

So maybe if the AI pickaxe sellers get divorced it could lead to poor financial results, but I'm not sure his story is applicable otherwise.

17. k4ch0w ◴[12 Apr 25 20:27 UTC] No.43667698{4}[source]▶
This is where Google thrives, it makes it's own TPUs that run the models.
18. TeMPOraL ◴[12 Apr 25 20:32 UTC] No.43667724[source]▶
There are two perspectives on this. What you said is definitely a good one if you're a business planning to add AI to whatever you're selling. But personally, as a user, I want the opposite to happen - I want AI to be the product that takes all the current products and turns them into tools it can use.
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19. zer00eyz ◴[12 Apr 25 20:45 UTC] No.43667814[source]▶
> AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products.

Its products like this (Wells Fargo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg

Great Wells Fargo has an "agent" ... and every one else is talking about how to make their products available for agent based AI.

People don't want 47 different agents to talk to, then want a single end point, they want a "personal assistant" in digital form, a virtual concierge...

And we can't have this, because the open web has been dead for more than a decade.

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20. coredog64 ◴[12 Apr 25 21:02 UTC] No.43667924[source]▶
> Most businesses don’t even have a clear use case for AI they just use it because the competition is and there is a FOMO effect

I consult in this space and 80-90% of what I see is chat bots and RAG.

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21. ltadeut ◴[12 Apr 25 21:44 UTC] No.43668158[source]▶
> The winners will be other businesses that use AI tooling to make better products.

agree with you on this.

you already see that playing out with Meta and a LOT of companies in China.

22. abaymado ◴[12 Apr 25 21:54 UTC] No.43668213[source]▶
I agree, I want a more intelligent voice assistant similar to Siri as a product, and all my apps to be add-ons the voice assistant could integrate with.
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23. nothercastle ◴[12 Apr 25 23:07 UTC] No.43668644{3}[source]▶
That’s exactly what I’d expect. Honestly Ai chat bots seems unnecessarily risky because you never really know what they might say on your behalf.
24. sshine ◴[13 Apr 25 05:45 UTC] No.43670393[source]▶
Why can't we have personal assistants because the open web has been dead?

I'll be happy with a personal assistant with access to my paid APIs.

25. oblio ◴[13 Apr 25 18:13 UTC] No.43674687{4}[source]▶
Clouds are the actual pickaxe manufacturers. Google has a cloud.