[martin_drapeau]

The fundamental question is how to monetize AI?

I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in

The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscription but long term will most likely become a commondity with advertising.

The second is tangible. My company is plugged directly to the OpenAI API. We build on it. Still very early and not so robust. But getting better and cheaper and faster over time. Active development. No reason to switch to something else as long as OpenAI leads the pack.

[jfoster]

That's like saying "how do you monetize the internet?"

There are so many ways, it makes the question seem nonsensical.

Ways to monetize AI so far:

Metered APIs (OpenAI and others)

Subscription products built on it (Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.)

Using it as a feature to give products a competitive edge (Apple Intelligence, Tesla FSD)

Selling the hardware (Nvidia)

[martin_drapeau]

20 years ago people asked that exact question. E-Commerce emerged. People knew the physical process of buying things would move online. Took some time. Sure, more things emerged but monetizing the Internet still remains about selling you something.

What similar parallel can we think of for AI?

[WhyOhWhyQ]

They'll be selling overpriced licenses per computer to every fortune 500 company.

[overcast]

My guess would be using "AI" to increase/enhance sales with your existing processes. Pay for this product, get 20% increased sales, ad revenue, yada yada.

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

But OpenAI doesn’t lead the pack. How do you determine when to switch or when to just keep going with (potentially marginally) inferior product?

[martin_drapeau]

Sure it does. Ask any common mortal about AI and they'll mention ChatGPT - not Claude, Gemini or whatever else. They might not even know OpenAI. But they do know ChatGPT.

Has it become a verb yet? Waiting to peole to replace "I googled how to..." with "I chatgpted how to...".

[atomsatomsatoms]

There would need to be significant capabilities that openai doesn't have or wouldn't be built on a short-ish timeline to have the enterprise switch. There's tons of bureaucratic work going on behind the scenes to approve a new vendor.

[skeeter2020]

I don't see how you charge enough for the second path to make the economics work.