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Is it so over for OpenAI? I just signed up for a Grok subscription for $7/month. Apparently the reasoning performance of their new model is on the same tier as ChatGPT-4o and Claude Sonnet. Image generation is best-in-class (using Flux). And of course it's much less neutered than the competition.
The miracles that OpenAI accomplished in the last 3 years now seem rather... commonplace. There's a lot of competitors at nearly the same level. Facebook's open-sourced AI, Llama 3.1, will commoditize the space. While it's not really feasible to run these models on your home computer (yet) it will be easy for smaller companies to buy compute and then sell Chat-GPT similar services. It will be a race to the bottom now.
OpenAI is running at a gigantic loss. I'm sure they were planning to capture a monopoly and then raise prices. That seems less likely to work now as their product is undifferentiated.
And the irony of Elon controlling a Chat-GPT similar is just too delicious. OpenAI management stole the IP of the non-profit for their own financial gain. Now open source is routing around the damage and rebuilding it all from scratch. I bet Grok's total development costs are like 1% of OpenAI's.
What? How?
We discussed this at length last year but here's a short rundown.
In 2015, OpenAI was founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others. Elon was by far the largest financial supporter. OpenAI was a non-profit, dedicated to sharing its research openly (thus the Open in its name).
Today, though the non-profit fig leaf still exists, OpenAI exists as a closed, for-profit company, half of which is owned by Microsoft.
Last year, Sam Altman was fired by the non-profit board because he was not being honest with them. However, many employees had stock grants worth tens of millions due to the deal with Microsoft. With these grants being threatened, the employees pledged to leave en masse and work for Microsoft directly. The board caved, and now Sam Altman has de-facto complete control of the "non-profit" board.
For that reason, Elon is suing OpenAI for breach of contract as they perverted the mission of the original non-profit for their own financial gain: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/tech/elon-musk-lawsuit-openai-sam-altman/index.html
It’s hilarious how these are the exact wrong people you want possessing decision-making capabilities regarding AI. Like, the moral test was placed in front of them, and they all failed it. They chose money over (1) honesty (2) their own pledged word (3) morality (4) the public Good.
I know!! Gah if OpenAI really did secure the monopoly that would've been the darkest timeline. I definitely believe Altman and the rest of that cadre are incredibly corrupt, if not downright evil.
It's heartening to see how much genuine competition there is out there.
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