[emccue]

I asked it to make a drawing of the US with every state numbered from biggest to smallest with 1 being the largest.

Maine was #89 (That is not a typo.) and Oregon was #1.

OpenAI as a company simply cannot exist without a constant influx of investor money. Burning money on every request is not a viable business model. Companies built on OpenAI/Anthropic are similarly deeply unprofitable businesses.

OpenAI needs to convert to a for-profit to get any more of the funding that Softbank promised (that its also unclear how Softbank itself would raise) or to get significant cash from anyone else. Microsoft can block this and probably will.

It all reminds me of that Paddy's Dollars bit from it's always sunny.

"We have no money and no inventory... there's still something we can do... that's still a business somehow..."

[nunez]

Today I learned that Washington is bigger than Texas, and Alaska is smaller than Florida! https://chatgpt.com/share/6896216c-c57c-8012-8241-604b255191...

PhDs need to catch up!

[tim333]

I tried a fairly basic Pokemon Go question - which pokemon are resistant to ghost attacks, and it got it wrong - said normal types are immune. Which is wrong. ASI is not quite with us yet.

[anon191928]

burning money worked for Uber. As long as they can IPO or get cheap debt from governm friends any valuation can work. Uber lost double digit billions as an app with no edge or anythin. It always made no sense beyond 1 billion

[emccue]

Uber's whole schtick is being what was an already profitable business model (Taxis) with lower overhead/easier access.

That money they burned was on customer acquisition, building infrastructure, etc. The unit economics of paying to be driven to the airport or Benihanas was always net positive.

They weren't losing money on every customer, even paying ones. There just isn't a business model here.

[gtirloni]

> no edge or anythin

I wouldn't say they had no edge. They had a huge advantage over traditional taxi companies. You can argue that a local Uber-like app could be easily implemented, that's where the investors came in to flood the markets and ensure other couldn't compete easily.

The situation is in no way similar to OpenAI's. OpenAI truly has no edge over Anthropic and others. AGI is not magically emerging from LLM's and they don't seem to have an alternative (nobody does but they promised it and got the big bucks so now it's their problem).

[riku_iki]

Uber had limited underpowered competition, so they could win starvation game.

OpenAI competes with google, who can drop 50B/y into AI hype for very long time.

[xnx]

> burning money worked for Uber.

TBD. Some people did well while Uber gave money away, but Uber is not net profitable over its lifetime.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

"...while Uber has achieved profitability, some analyses suggest that a substantial portion of these profits may come from an increased revenue share at the expense of drivers' earnings".

So let's imagine is 2040 and OpenAI is finally profitable. Now, Uber did this by increasing prices, firing some staff and paying smaller wages to drivers. And all this while having near-monopoly in certain areas. What realistic measures would they need to take in order to compete with, say, Google? Because I just wish them good luck with that.

[Telemakhos]

I had it create a map "in the style of a history textbook." It came up with something that looks worse than I imagined: https://pasteboard.co/3zGy5ti4hHuT.jpg

[infecto]

Isn’t it old news that the full for-profit is not happening and they renegotiated the terms that would make the current proposed PBC a solution as it meets the economic terms?

I have no idea if OpenAI succeeds or not but I find arguments like yours difficult to understand. Most businesses are not using these systems to draw a map. Maybe the release of 5 is lackluster but it does not change that there is some value in these tools today and ignoring R&D (which is definitely a huge cost) they run at a profit.

[dylan604]

> ignoring R&D (which is definitely a huge cost) they run at a profit.

how can you say such a hand wavy comment with a straight face? you can't just ignore a huge cost for a company and suddenly they are profitable. that's Enron level moronic. without constant R&D, the company gets beat by competitors that continue R&D. the product is not "good enough" to not continue improving.

if i ignored my major costs in my finances, i could retire, but i can't go to the grocery store and walk out with a basket of food while telling them that i'm ignoring this major cost in my life.

get real

[emccue]

The entire US stock market is propped up by big tech companies spending massively on Data Centers and GPUs for AI. OpenAI is valued higher than Netflix.

A company that can pull in single digit billions in revenue for hundreds of billions in expenses just doesn't make sense.

> Most businesses are not using these systems t̶o̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶w̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶.̶

FTFY

And no - while it might be obvious from the outside in that it probably won't happen, the continued existence of the business is still predicated on conversion to a for-profit. They don't just need the amount of money they've already "raised", they need too keep getting more money forever.

[sillyfluke]

Does it get the non-drawing written text list version right at least?

[emccue]

It regurgitates the list in text form, which is almost certainly in the training data.

But this company is valued more than Netflix. The bar should not be this low.