alt Hacker NewsI think investors would certainly love this. So why hasn’t it already happened?
My guess: they would lose a ton of cultural cachet.
Turning OpenAI into an ads business is basically admitting that AGI isn’t coming down the pipeline anytime soon. Yes, I know people will make some cost-based argument that ads + agi is perfectly logical.
But that’s not how people will perceive things, and OpenAI knows this. And I think the masses have a point: if we are really a few years away from AGI replacing the entire labor force, then there’s surely higher margin businesses they can engage in compared to ads. Especially since they are allegedly a non-profit.
After Google and Facebook, nobody is buying the “just a few ads to fund operating costs” argument either.
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Aka you need them deep enough into the trap they can’t escape, before you trigger it.
I agree but even if AGI is possible within 5-10 years it must be hard to justify maintaining or even increasing this level of burn for much longer.
Yup, it’s essentially an admission of failure. I think the people who were expecting AI to improve exponentially are disappointed by its current state, where it’s basically just a useful tool to assist workers in some highly specific fields.