[ryanSrich]

I think there are two things that happened

1. OpenAI bet largely on consumer. Consumers have mostly rejected AI. And in a lot of cases even hate it (can't go on TikTok or Reddit without people calling something slop, or hating on AI generated content). Anthropic on the other hand went all in on B2B and coding. That seems to be the much better market to be in.

2. Sam Altman is profoundly unlikable.

[nl]

> Consumers have mostly rejected AI.

People like to complain about things, but consumers are heavily using AI.

ChatGPT.com is now up to the 4th most visited website in the world: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/chatgpt-users

[drawfloat]

We’ve seen many times that platforms can be popular and widely disliked at the same time. Facebook is a clear example.

The difference there is it became hated after it was established and financially successful. If you need to turn free visitors in to paying customers, that general mood of “AI is bad and going to make me lose my job/fuck up society” is yet another hurdle OpenAI will have to overcome.

[ryanSrich]

Are they paying through? Reddit was also popular for a long time and didn't make much money.

My point was more that it seems this wave of AI is more profitable if you're in B2B vs. B2C.

[isk517]

Usually when I hear about people using ChatGPT they are usually just using it as a search engine that delivers summarized results. The average person wouldn't use email if they had to pay for it, good luck making money off of all of those visitors without just becoming another ad tech company competing with the other ad tech companies.

[cschep]

#2 cannot be understated

[edoceo]

Was the golden boy for a while? What shifted? I don't even remember what he did "first" to get the status. Is it maybe just a case of familiarity breeding contempt?

[notyourwork]

Cringey to watch their interviews.

[glalonde]

*Overstated

[3kkdd]

Indeed. Sama seems to be incredibly delusional. OAI going bust is going to really damage his well-being, irrespective of his financial wealth. Brother really thought he was going to take over the world at one point.

[raw_anon_1111]

Instead of anecdotes about “what you saw on TikTok and Reddit”, it’s really not that hard to lookup how many paid users ChatGPT has.

Besides OpenAI was never going to recoup the billions of dollars based on advertising or $20/month subscriptions

[okhobb]

Is CEO likeability a reliable predictor?

[catdog]

I think it depends how visible the CEO is to (potential) customers, in this case very visible, he is in the media all the time.

[pizlonator]

good point.

I don't think it is at all

The CEO just has to have followership: the people who work there have to think that this is a good person to follow. Even they don't have to "like" him

[g947o]

> OpenAI bet largely on consumer

Source on that?

Lots of organizations offer ChatGPT subscriptions, and Microsoft pushes Copilot as hard as it can which uses GPT models.

[BoredomIsFun]

Those who is publicly hating LLMs still use them though, even for the stuff the claim to hate, like writing fanfic.

[senordevnyc]

HN is such a bubble. ChatGPT is wildly successful, and about to be an order of magnitude more so, once they add ads. And I have never heard a non-technical person mention Altman. I highly doubt they have any idea who he is, or care. They’re all still using ChatGPT.

[filoeleven]

> and about to be an order of magnitude more so, once they add ads.

How do you figure?

[jackblemming]

You have to give credit to Sam, he’s charismatic enough to the right people to climb man made corporate structures. He was also smart enough to be at the right place at the right time to enrich himself (Silicon Valley). He seems to be pretty good at cutting deals. Unfortunately all of the above seems to be at odds with having any sort of moral core.

[3kkdd]

Ermmm what?

He and his personality caused people like Ilya to leave. At that point the failure risk of OAI jumped tremendously. The reality he will have to face is, he has caused OAIs demise.

Perhaps hes ok with that as long as OAI goes down with him. Would expect nothing less from him.

[simianwords]

Naive to call Sam Altman unlikeable.

[moomoo11]

I actually think Sam is “better” than say Elon or Dario because he seems like a typical SF/SV tech bro. You probably know the type (not talking about some 600k TC fang worker, I mean entrepreneurs).

He says a lot of fluff, doesn’t try to be very extreme, and focuses on selling. I don’t know him personally but he comes across like an average person if that makes sense (in this environment that is).

I think I personally prefer that over Elon’s self induced mental illnesses and Dario being a doomer promoting the “end” of (insert a profession here) in 12 months every 6 months. It’s hard for me to trust a megalomaniac or a total nerd. So Sam is kinda in the middle there.

I hope OpenAI continues to dominate even if the margins of winning tighten.

[ryanSrich]

Elon is one of the most unlikable people on the planet, so I wouldn't consider him much of a bar.

[krupan]

Not extreme? Have you seen his interviews? I guess his wording and delivery are not extreme, but if you really listen to what he's saying, it's kinda nuts.

[windexh8er]

He's definitely not. If Altman. Is a "typical" SF/SV tech bro then that's an indication the valley has turned full d-bag. Altman's past is gross. So, if he's the norm then I will vehemently avoid any dollars of mine going to OAI. I paid for an account for a while, but just like Musk I lose nothing over actively avoiding his Ponzi scheme of a company.

[pinnochio]

Altman is a consummate liar and manipulator with no moral scruples. I think this LLM business is ethically compromised from the start, but Dario is easily the least worst of the three.

[jacquesm]

> I actually think Sam is “better” than say Elon or even Dario because he seems like a typical SF/SV tech bro.

If you nail the bar to the floor, then sure, you can pass over it.

> He says a lot of fluff, doesn’t try to be very extreme, and focuses on selling.

I don't now what your definition of extreme is but by mine he's pretty extreme.

> I think I personally prefer that over Elon’s self induced mental illnesses and Dario being a doomer promoting the “end” of (insert a profession here) in 12 months every 6 months.

All of them suffer from thinking their money makes them somehow better.

> I hope OpenAI continues to dominate even if the margins of winning tighten.

I couldn't care less. I'm on the whole impressed with AI, less than happy about all of the slop and the societal problems it brings and wished it had been a more robust world that this had been brought in to because I'm not convinced the current one needed another issue of that magnitude to deal with.