1/ Implement more aggressive advertising 2/ Stop training new models 3/ Raise more funding
The author's prediction is that OpenAI will get bought.
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but there actually is precedent for that: Reid Hoffman sold his AI startup after he realized there was no possible way for an AI startup to compete with the Googles of the world with $100B in cash and giant free cash flow machines given how capital intensive it is to build AI.[1]
To me, it's not that outlandish to think that if OpenAI really does need to spend a ton of money to survive, they will probably have to either raise or get bought (or find that magic money tree by monetizing their business). Because right now, they don't have the cash flow to compete with Google.
Could obviously change, but I think that's where the author is coming from.
This is pretty normal for a fast-growing startup, although OpenAI may be the largest to ever do it.
A single LLM provider might have been able to get great margins and capture a significant fraction of the total economic output of (currently e.g. junior grade software engineering), but collectively they're in an all-pay auction for the hardware to train models worth paying for, and at the same on questionable margins because they need to compete with each other on cost.
They can all go bankrupt, and leave behind only trained models that normal people won't be able to run for 5 years while consumer-grade stuff catches up. Or any single one of them might win, which may not be OpenAI. Any or all may get state subsidies (US, Chinese, European, whatever).
All kinds of outcomes are possible.
[1] https://github.com/deepseek-ai/open-infra-index/blob/main/20...
Getting rid of frontier training will mean open source models will very quickly catch up. The great houses of AI need to continue training or die.
In any case, best of luck (not) to the first house to do so!
IMO LLMs will be equally transformative for online influence campaigns (aka ads + Cambridge analytica on steroids)
Oh and yeah, AI has already been shown to be more persuasive than the average human. It's only a matter of time before someone's paying to decide what it persuades you of
I understand being bearish and frightened of AI but this accounts for absolutely NOTHING, and especially doesn't include any projections on potential ad revenue which is likely going to be huge given their DAU and what you can extrapolate their ARPU to be based on other big tech advertisers.
Sometimes these "articles" are sent out as thinly veiled "press releases" prior to an new round of investment. Sometimes someone who thinks they are a "reporter" has what they think is an "exclusive" or a "hot take". Regardless, as someone who has spent all of his career in startups...this is...business as usual. Another round of funding/financing will commence. Open AI will be fine unless investors lose confidence in AI. We won't know how it will play out until it plays out. Media outlets reporting on this are playing off the AI bubble hype for clicks. (Yes, we are in a bubble. No, nobody knows when it will pop, nor how bad it will be, ad driven company just wants more ad revenue, nothing to see here, move along.)
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