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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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It's hard to turn users and growth into profits.

Give it time. ChatGPT came out 5 months ago and people are already doing pretty cool things with it. Google took 3 years till it turned a profit. Facebook took 5.

Humans use air, yet there is no way to make money from that. Many websites use php, yet you cannot really invest in php or C++.

Air is non-rivalrous and non-excludable, it and PHP is in a totally different reference class to this kind of AI service. It clearly is rivalrous and excludable. AI is not a public good.

It's possible this 100 million is inflated by lumping all Microsoft users, like outlook or windows, with Open Ai.

That's false. I made an account specifically for OpenAI to use ChatGPT. Plus there are more than 100 million Windows and Microsoft users.

I’m guessing they’re counting everyone who’s used Bing for search since incorporating GPT, not just people who’ve chatted with it.

That's false. I made an account specifically for OpenAI to use ChatGPT. Plus there are more than 100 million Windows and Microsoft users.

I was just speculating on how they got 100 million. Making an account to test the service is not the same as returning to it, like in the case of Facebook or Instagram, in which people are addicted to the dopamine of social media and keep coming back. The daily user count is 13 million, is decent but still a long way from even 2011 Facebook. People are not going to pay money for something they use infrequently...some will but not enough to make this as valuable as Meta.

I am trying to think how I could use Chat GPT in my everyday life. Maybe as a research assistant?

Give it time. ChatGPT came out 5 months ago and people are already doing pretty cool things with it. Google took 3 years till it turned a profit. Facebook took 5.

As of Jan 2023, Open Ai is valued at $30 billion, maybe even more now . So a lot of growth and earnings is already priced in, hence why I would be keen on betting against it now. Even Facebook in 2009 was valued at only $6.5 billion yet it had more users and earnings compared to Open Ai.