Dare Obasanjo

OpenAI has a lot of key challenges that makes this a do or die year for the company.

1. Their AI models are increasingly undifferentiated as too many labs have caught up.

2. Even with raising $100B they are still being outspent by most of FAANG and can’t keep up that fundraising pace annually.

3. They’ve spread themselves too thin by going after devices, web browsers, ad platforms and short form video at once. They don’t have the talent density or competitive advantage to do all these well.

Feb 7 at 7:06pmWeb
Show threadDare ObasanjoFeb 7
4. Last but not least is that both Gemini and Grok have begun to catch up on their flagship product, ChatGPT. And OpenAI is about to degrade the user experience with ads just as the competition is heating up.
Show threadO JFeb 8
@carnage4life why do you think the ads will have a degrading effect?
Show threadBret CarmichaelFeb 8
@carnage4life
5. Google can fund Gemini development with profits from its ad business. OpenAI loses money; it can only development with debt.
6. Google doesn’t need ads in Gemini. It can use Gemini chat history to serve targeted ads in other products, like search.
Show threadShafik YaghmourFeb 7

@carnage4life

I think your missing a subtle hidden challenge.

Companies start to realize that smaller more narrowly focused models with training data tailored to their problem are actually better solutions. Over humongous solve everything models.

Maybe contrarian here but I think this was always the biggest risk. Fundamentally if we look at four decades of AI solutions in production, they are all narrowly focused and this was not a accident.

The whole go LARGE and try to solve everything was always kind of crazy if you stopped and thought it through.

Show threadMark LevisonFeb 7

@shafik @carnage4life

Agreed long term seems more likely small focused models.

We just need the whale to fail first.

Show threadPotung ThulFeb 7

@carnage4life

What do you think are their chances of doing, versus dying? It seems to me that even if they die, they could just shrink back their scope and achieve sufficient concentration of talent to stay alive, thrive, and even become the flagship for a smaller number of the fields that you are describing, for example focusing on devices and then they would be able to take the lead and then expand later, if they are able.

Show threadstilescrisisFeb 9
@potungthul @carnage4life Shrinking and living turns out to be much, much harder than staying small. It would necessarily imply massive layoffs, and that tends to cause your best and brightest to leave too.