And it looks like now they might be very close to the limits of their own capability. I'm not sure how much more they can give.
On the surface, their new features always seem to be quite exciting. But when the dust settles it is again all very lackluster, often copied from open source ideas. Not something you can bet on.
Their biggest moats are their popularity, marketing, and their large bags of cash. The latter of which they are burning through extremely quickly. The thing is, it's easy to build something massive when you don't care about unit economics. But where do they end up when the competitive forces commoditize this?
When listening to interviews with Sam I was always surprised by how little useful information I am able to get out of listening to him. I'm sure he's very smart but he tries to project the aura of radical honesty while simultaneously trying to keep all of his cards extremely close to his chest. All that without the product chops to actually back it up. That's my read.
To be fair, isn’t that kind of the bar for CEOs? Their job is to hire and fire senior people, ensure they have a mountain of cash, and put out fires.
It’s not an operational position and so I wouldn’t expect a CEO to have deep operational knowledge.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the division of labor though?
I don't know how this unfolds but when somewhat smart models become a commodity, and thus the remaining 90% of the population get access to polished chatbots distributed through dominant platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. - where does that leave OpenAI at? High-end models probably. And maybe with superintelligence unlocked it's all that's needed to win business-wise, I don't know.