[phillipcarter]

Wouldn't be a gary marcus post without congratulating himself for tweeting something that all but confirms a disaster that hasn't happened yet.

Anyways, OpenAI is not in profit-seeking mode, and there's no economic incentives to do so right now.

[wavemode]

> Anyways, OpenAI is not in profit-seeking mode, and there's no economic incentives to do so right now.

You disparaged the article, but then immediately agreed with its main point. The fact that there is no economic incentive for OpenAI to run sustainably is a problem. It means they will happily continue to spend trillions of investor, lender, and (soon) government money, most of which is being burned as waste heat radiating from GPUs, in pursuit of an AGI pipedream.

[phillipcarter]

I didn’t agree with the article at all.

[stanleykm]

Not being in profit seeking mode is one thing. Being so far away from profit seeking mode that you need a government bailout is an entirely different thing.

[aeonfox]

According to this[0] podcast some captains of industry in SV consider that bubbles are good, actually. At least, that is the thesis of this[1] book published by Stripe Press. Not because they'll deliver returns for their investors, but because they drive innovation in the long run. But obviously, if they are perceived to have terrible ROI, they aren't getting over the line, which leads to a dilemma – how do we reach that moonshot without fooling a bunch of people and destroying the economy along the way?

All that said, anyone who spends a lot of time with AI knows the current direction of generative AI isn't really that moonshot. But the scale of compute that is being unlocked right now, along with technologies like photonics, might be what's key to AGI.

[0] https://shows.acast.com/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast/episode... [1] https://www.stripe.press/boom

[d0odk]

If you show revenue, people will ask "How much?" And it will never be enough, but if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue. You're a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn, it's about what you're worth. And who's worth the most? Companies that lose money.

[array_key_first]

> And who's worth the most? Companies that lose money.

This is a fairly new phenomenon and we don't actually know if it works. It's entirely possible this exact mentality blows up the economy.

[Gud]

Actually, companies that make a shitload of money are worth the most.

[sethops1]

Huh? They have committed to about a trillion dollars in infrastructure build out they will need to pay for. How about instead of begging tax payers to back loans to pay for this, they actually produce some profit and pay for it themselves?

[Forgeties79]

I feel like this question needs to be even louder because in the past they would just mumble something about “job creation,” but that’s undermined by the fact that they also tout AI as “job replacement” to investors and clients alike.

[woeirua]

Is that why they just changed to become a for-profit company?

[johnnienaked]

There's no ability for them to do so. They have a pathetic conversion rate and lose 3x as much money as they make.

[bix6]

No economic incentives to seek profit?

Yeah there certainly aren’t when you can sucker everyone else into paying for your money losing company and cash out in the secondary market.

[zahllos]

Yeah. No revenue. Nobody wants to hear about revenue! It's not about how much you make, it is about how much you're worth and who is worth the most? Companies that lose money.

[babelfish]

800M WAU is a "losing company"?

[HWR_14]

Almost every Silicon Valley startup goes through a period where they seek growth, not profit and spend their investors money to maintain it.