alt Hacker NewsI think they're operating beyond their current (human) capacity, trying to test out too many things at a time.
But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it.
(This is a more narrow version of my belief that general AI tools like LLMs fundamentally don't fit as additions to products, but rather subsume products, and this makes them an existential threat to the software industry. Not to software or computing, just to all the software vendors, whose job is to slice off pieces of computational universe, put them in boxes to prevent interoperability, and give each a name so it's a "product" that can be sold or rented).
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> they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce
They definitely would if they could. They desperately need money. They already told the whole world they want to replace them, they just can’t.
> This is a more narrow version of my belief that general AI tools like LLMs fundamentally don't fit as additions to products, but rather subsume products
That seems reasonable, its just yet to be seen if LLMs are a form of artificial intelligence in any meaningful sense of the word.
They're impressive ML for sure, but that is in fact different from AI despite how companies building them have tried to merge the terms together.
Why do you foresee OpenAI’s involvement in the software business mitigating the resistance to interoperability and companies making money through productization? If they were actually interested in solving those problems instead of trying to secure themselves the biggest slice of economic pie, wouldn’t they have been happy about Chinese companies distilling their models? Are they engagement-juicing inn their heavily subsidized service à la Uber because they’re interested in promoting a better future for humanity? I’m skeptical.
> but rather subsume products, and this makes them an existential threat to the software industry.
The US stock market has priced this in already. Many software only companies are perceived to be under threat by ai. It represents a wonderful arbitrage opportunity for ai skeptics in fact.
> perhaps they're just holding back
Considering the money they need, they over promise and under deliver.
> But a dreamer in me entertains another idea: perhaps they're just holding back, because they realize that actually succeeding at this will instantly kill (or at least mortally wound) e-commerce as we know it.
Sam Altman doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself and has time and again shown he has no restraint for trampling over others to further his own goals. Why would e-commerce be where he draws the line?