I see 2 paths:
- Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers
- Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in
The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscription but long term will most likely become a commondity with advertising.
The second is tangible. My company is plugged directly to the OpenAI API. We build on it. Still very early and not so robust. But getting better and cheaper and faster over time. Active development. No reason to switch to something else as long as OpenAI leads the pack.
20 years ago people asked that exact question. E-Commerce emerged. People knew the physical process of buying things would move online. Took some time. Sure, more things emerged but monetizing the Internet still remains about selling you something.
Assuming AI progress continues, AI could replace both Microsoft's biggest product, OS, and Google's biggest product, search and ads. And there is a huge tail end of things autonomous driving/flying, drug discovery, robotics, programming, healthcare etc.
Too vague. How would it replace Windows? How would it replace search?
The latter is more believable to me, but how would the AI-enhanced version generate the additional revenue that its costs require? And I think a lot of improvement would be required... people are going to be annoyed by things like hallucinations while trying to buy products.
In reality, as soon as a competitor shows up, Google will add whatever copycat features it needs to search. So it isn't clear to me that search is a market that can be won, short of antitrust making changes.
You saw "Her" or Iron man? That's how it could replace windows. Basically entire OS working in natural language. Imagine a great human personal assistant who operates computer for you.
And searchGPT could replace Google. Also, wasn't the point of genAI is that it is cheaper than the entire stack of search? At least I know for some recommendation GPT-4 is literally cheaper than many companies in house models and I know companies who saved money using GenAI.
Not saying any of these would likely happen, but still it is not in the fantasy realm.
> people are going to be annoyed by things like hallucinations
That's like saying people are going to be annoyed by no delivery in online shopping. Yes it happened more often earlier, but we are arguing more on the ideal case if it could get solved. That's why I said if AI progress is good in my message, which means we solve hallucination etc.
OK, then I'm pretty sure it won't happen. I don't want to have a personal assistant replace an OS. I don't even want to talk to Alexa. And I'm not alone...
I meant human personal assistant as I was clear in previous post. If you are given human personal assistant for free who could replace your screen usage, would you be open to replace your OS with it?
Also we are just talking on theoretical level if AI is able to imitate human assistant(which I personally give 10% chance of happening, but not out of realm of possibility).
My guess would be using "AI" to increase/enhance sales with your existing processes. Pay for this product, get 20% increased sales, ad revenue, yada yada.
Sure it does. Ask any common mortal about AI and they'll mention ChatGPT - not Claude, Gemini or whatever else. They might not even know OpenAI. But they do know ChatGPT.
Has it become a verb yet? Waiting to peole to replace "I googled how to..." with "I chatgpted how to...".
You’re moving the goalposts a little here. In your other post you implied you were using OpenAI for its technical properties. “But getting better and cheaper and faster over time.”
Whether something has more name recognition isn’t completely related here. But if that’s what you really mean, as you state, “any common mortal about AI and they'll mention ChatGPT - not Claude, Gemini or whatever else. They might not even know OpenAI. But they do know ChatGPT,” then I mostly agree, but as an outsider it doesn’t seem like this is a robust reason to build on top of.
OpenAI's sole focus is serving AI to consumers and businesses. I trust them more to remain backwards compatible over time.
Google changed their AI name multiple times. I've built on them before and they end of lifed the product I was using. Zero confidence Gemini will be there tomorrow.
There would need to be significant capabilities that openai doesn't have or wouldn't be built on a short-ish timeline to have the enterprise switch. There's tons of bureaucratic work going on behind the scenes to approve a new vendor.
I just live with Windows Defender (heavily modified via GPO to disable sample submission and auto-remediation) these days as there is no such thing as a pure third-party antivirus product anymore. Avast (and basically all others) want to do things like install their own "safe" browser, MITM https connections by installing certificates in the root CA store, screw with firewall settings, etc which I absolutely do not want happening on my system.
All I really need is something that will hook into the filesystem layer and scan files as they are accessed/written/executed and gives me a clear UI that allows me to choose what happens if it detects something.
Some antiviruses are better than others, some are faster than others,
prices are different (some are free), support is different.
See virustotal.com when sending a file, how many engines will find
something, how many will miss, and how many will tell you that malware
has been detected on a clean file.
Some of the third party EDRs do things than even the top tier Microsoft Defender
XDR with Vulnerability Management can't do yet, and there is no "built-in" EDR for Linux.
Third party security tools have always been monkey patches for gaps in the OS. Eventually the OS gets the features that the third parties have, but then new threats create new requirements.
Whether you need it or not is a question for your threat model, but for me personally it's been years since I felt it was worth it on Windows. I still use a commercial EDR system on Linux due to the OSS solutions being quite lacking.
Part of the gap that still exists is cost. A cloud service that isn't constrained by your local resources can do more as far as password cracking or applying AI to the password protected document/container problem, but we're not at a point where they're going to apply that to every hotmail or gmail account for free.
Your thread is 9 months old. Do you have a product and a bit of traction?
I was in a similar place to you back in 2019. Via side gigs I built a product that served a niche. Eventually, raised 180k with TinySeed (specialized in boostrapping B2B SaaS). Best move ever. Gave me and my cofounder a runway to find product market fit. We're now 8 full time at Activity Messenger and doubling year over year.
Have a listen to the podcast Startups for the rest of us. All about bootstrapping. Get inspired and start building.
No. I spent some of my money while I was employed on contractors but it didn't work out. I am back on my own as of April 1 however I had a medical issue that lasted ~5 weeks with a few bills to go along with it so I am currently contracting to make money to pay those. The unexpected expenses were ~20% of my runway so I didn't feel comfortable just trying to absorb the cost. I also missed out on a conference I intended to attend.
> raised 180k with TinySeed
That is awesome - did you invest all of it in hiring?
> 8 full time at Activity Messenger and doubling year over year
Very impressive! Congrats. Turns out we're in a similar space (as are several dozen other companies, as I am sure you are aware). JackRabbit is one of my customer's most common platforms.
I sometimes listen to the All in podcast. The 4 VCs recently blasted Apple saying they don't know why there are so many engineers. And they don't know why an iPhone is so expensive. They last longer now and don't need to upgrade as often. To their eyes an iPhone has become boring.
My reply is Apple supports close to 2 billion devices. They have to work and never crash. They also need to get upgraded for security patches and new features. The fact they find them "boring" is a good thing. Means iPhones have become an intrisic part of their lives.
This article describes one of the many things Apple has to do to make them "boring". Indeed a feat of engineering.
Now, when they replicate that success with Siri, that will be a game changer. Hopefully advances in LLMs will bring that day forward.
It's all about saving time. Musk got a private jet to save time travelling around. Employees WFH to save time too. That's the hack they found to avoid commuting to work. In such they improve the quality of their lives.
Musk, Jasys and Benioff should treat their employees like they do their customers. Adapt to their needs. Asking people to come back to the office is just like selling something a customer no longer wants.
As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.
I find the “it’s not fair to service workers” incredibly unconvincing. There’s lots of things that tech workers get that service workers don’t. Better pay, better flexibility with vacations, control over schedules, probably better insurance, the ability to sit all day, etc. The fact that WFH is the line for Musk is because he doesn’t like it. The same for other CEOs. But they know that isn’t an argument anyone will listen to.
Pretty much, from all the debate, its clear that the problem isn't the office. It's the commute. I hated going to the office when it was an hour drive away, often worse with traffic incidents. But for the last few years I've lived much closer so it's a quick train trip or bike ride to work and now I much prefer going to the office. It's so obviously better for communicating with people.
There's been plenty of discussion about how the problem is, in many cases, also the office. Right in the discussion on this very article, in fact. [0]
There are many reasons to dislike forced work-in-the-office policies. Not all of these reasons apply to all people, but they all apply to at least some.
I’m not going to defend Musk. The sooner he is removed from his companies, the better.
However, the Tesla Cars made in China are excellent.
The Tesla model Y is the biggest selling EV in Australia for a reason.
Also, the Tesla Powerwalls are very good, and anecdotally based on discussions with owners of other home batteries, superior to other battery products.
And Starlink actually seems to be pretty decent!
Plenty of people in Australia love their StarLink!
Space X is doing Ok too it seems…
So yes, Musk has become rather odious, but the people in his companies are doing great work IMHO :-)
I actually hadn’t heard that excuse yet, but holy shit. It’s like once you’re a CEO you’re back in 3rd grade where everything should be “fair” again, unless it’s YOU getting ahead in which case you’re probably just REALLY talented.
It's the same time. An employee effectively pays me for what I feel is the "cost" of working there, which is measured in hours lost of my day.
They don't pay me to work 24/7, they pay me to work 8h per day. But of course the cost measured by the employee isn't the time lost working, it's the time lost working or commuting. So someone who used to sell 10 hours of their day to their employer and now sells 8 hours of their day to their employer for the same pay, isn't going to be happy about going back to selling 10 hours.
The fact that we got those 2 hours as an hourly "raise" at the start of the pandemic doesn't change anything. Being forced to go to back to the office is effectively a cut in your hourly rate.
Well, WFH can be good or bad depending on how is done, on both sides, worker side and company side. I'm an EU home worker and I have experienced some issues on my sides and many on company sides, that's much a matter of knowledge and willingness to test and improve.
Most managers, at least in EU, can't really get WFH, not just in terms of synchronicity or asynchronicity but in mere practical terms: they simply fail to understand the "job" part vs the "office boilerplate" part. This is an enormous issue that might reduce productivity alone. Most workers fear the change so tend to have poor home office setup and that's as well can lower productivity.
All these phenomenon are not part of WFH paradigm but just part of an evolutionary path we have all to do to understand. It's not much different than the old UK rule to put a horse in front of any train to control their speed. Now, do you prefer to have forever a horse in front of every train or having get rid of them is a good riddance?
WFH can save both employees and companies money IF done properly, similarly working on site can save money and work well or not, it's not a matter of where you work but how much you understand how to work in a certain way or another. The whole society can save money and live far better if the society evolve well, and we still have absurd procedures with pdf forms made not as forms but as to-be-printed, then scanned, than mailed tools, because those who have designed such procedure do not know nor understand the "modern" world (modern quoted since pdf fillable forms, digital signatures, web forms etc are modern, but definitively not new).
Now try to project the cost for a company of:
- eliminating offices, so not rent, cleaning services, electricity, ...
- enlarging they potential employees choice at least at a national level, if not the entire world (witch might be fiscally complicated)
- being able to move their fiscal residence as they want since there is no physical boundary
Does companies save money with such model? DEFINITIVELY YES, at least if they know how to do, and their best interest is trying, learning from errors, correct them and keep evolving instead of bovinely hold untenable positions just because they know them and fear the change.
As an employee I do save money WFH, but to do so I've invested much, I left a big city for mountains, building a new home and so on. I've studied and have done the change. A company can do the same with LESS investments typically.
It is sort of measurable. How many lines you output, how many bugs are in your code, how much time is spent fixing your bugs. Etc.
I mean its far from perfect and leadership roles are harder to measure (but can be measured by how the people under them think about them). But still I get your point.
I think the best we can do is have an expert familiar with the task and codebase evaluate contributions. Trouble is, this can be corrupted by all sorts of internal politicking.
We still do Agile Scrum, and our velocity has gone up significantly. Experienced team, mature code base, no real external forces to skew these figures.
Goodhart's Law does not apply, as we have done this for many years and are happy [1] with the way we do things.
With more people working from home, we need less concentration of people living nearby their work. This would decrease housing pricing and allow service workers to live closer to their work.
> As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.
Exactly. I had a service job and I didn't mind going into work at all because that's what the job is. And besides, interacting with customers is much preferable to being in a building surrounded by people typing on keyboards when no one actualy needs to be there.
Should we now say that executive jobs are unfair to employees because employees don't get to run the company?
I worked a service job that required going to work for minimum wage and wasn’t happy that my wage didn’t increase when WFH employees got the benefit of WFH during COVID.
A class of workers benefited, but other classes didn’t.
Those roles are upper class or professional jobs. I’m guessing they had the ability to extract higher compensation or work conditions, compared to others who had to accept the new normal or else.
Musk was a terrible employee himself, he always wanted to do things his way. When Musk talks about WFH, it is something personal, you can see his face because he gets emotional.
I believe it is a good thing to meet colleagues from time to time in the same place, but for deep work I need to work alone. No distractions, on my place.
As an adult I can manage myself better than most people can.
Managers do want people in the office to physically lock them: if you are a giant in a certain place most works for you or have to migrate elsewhere and moving homes scare many, it's not easy, family members might have issues moving their jobs together, eventual kids might suffer loosing friends and change schools and so on. People in the office means people more tied to their employers, more keen to accept not-so-nice things at work, not-so-nice changes and so on.
While remote workers can change employers potentially just changing some login screens, witch makes them less keen to accept bad work conditions or bag changes.
> As for Musk saying "it ain't fair for service employees" I reply those are different jobs. Poor excuse.
Of course it's poor excuse, solidarity amongst workers is something Musk actively fights against, using that as a rallying cry for this is more than a poor excuse, it's blatant weaponisation of empathy against workers themselves.
Intel's five nodes in four years plan is extremely agressive and ambitious. They are trying to pull off something that I believe is not feasible. Lots of moving parts in parallel.
I worked in a Fab for a year and the complexity is mind blowing. I don't see how they can execute to build those nodes and get the yields under control in such a short timeframe.
Yes. I think they can get the node out with a little bit of delay. But I don't think they'll be very profitable for a while.
However, they do have good timing because the world is about to enter a period where chip designers will be desperate to get new AI chips manufactured.
There is only one cutting edge fab which is TSMC. Chip designers want a second supplier desperately to create some competition.
I think 20A/18A will only be used by products customer can buy in mid-2025 - not late 2024 like they said.
You can see here that Intel has already delayed everything by 1-2 quarters from their 2022 roadmap:
There is an AI chip frenzy for sure. However consumers aren't buying those - data centers are - those owned by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla and Apple. I therefore question the sustainability.
What happens if AI is a bubble and those companies don't get an ROI? What if they can't find a way to monetize AI because consumers just see it as a commodity? What if after ramp up AI chip purchase dies down because models are already trained and inference doesn't need that much compute?
AI is going to drive huge demand for new silicon for inference mostly but also for training. Every device needs to have new processors that are optimized for running ML. For example, when the new iPhones integrate LLMs directly onto iPhones, you'll need to keep buying new iPhones because Apple will drastically increase the size of Neural Engine every generation.
AI is going to cause a huge uplift in chip demand from clouds to small devices.
Hmm. For iPhones and Android, Apple and Samsung already have that covered. Their AI chips already exist and production must already be planned for the coming years. NVIDIA isn't going to contribute.
I heard predictions for increase in AI PC sales but I don't buy it. That remains to be proven.
So we are left with data centers. Isn't that right?
They need to drastically increase the size of the NPU every year to keep up. We are a long way away from running GPT4 on an iPhone.
Every chip will eventually need to be replaced with one that can do inference for a massive AI model. And we will need more chips to put in more places.
Focus on data privacy may ring a bell with people using ad blockers. Not for the regular joe though. They just want things to work and Chrome just works.
I wonder what percentage of internet users use ad blockers? That would pretty much represent the market cap for Firefox.
Bad faith arguments never end. You don't like us dumping toxic waste in your rivers? That's easy, just move to a different town!
This technology is too entrenched in our daily lives and Apple is too dominant for any business to be able to ignore their users, which is roughly half of the western population.
Apple is however free to leave the EU if it deems these rules to be unreasonable.
On hacker news they are. Plus there are already app stores, popular ones, that work by rooting ios devices. Surely that menas there's STRONG demand for just that.
The orange site might not be, but when even EU bureaucrats are aware of the problem and think it's important enough to address, you can't fall back onto Apple-esque "tiny percentage of affected users" reasoning anymore.
then just have it off by default, changeable deep in settings? or let it be a permanent choice when you set up the device? or have a separate browser for side-loading that doesn't come pre-installed?
the majority of chickens aren't asking to live free in the fields
Google bought their way into a lot of software bundling deals too. From time to time I still encounter Windows installers that try to install Chrome alongside whatever the main program is.
People don't understand that Chrome is purpose built for advertising.
It allows first-party cookies to live for over a year which are used for re-targeting and building behavioural profiles. It recklessly incorporates every API under the sun which advertisers use for fingerprinting with 99% accuracy. And despite it being insidious and a major invasion of privacy Google still happily partners with companies who use it.
And now people who are completely ignorant about how their data is being used are jumping up and data for this behaviour to extend to all mobile devices.
I see 2 paths: - Consumers - the Google way: search and advertise to consumers - Businesses - the AWS way: attrack businesses to use your API and lock them in
The first is fickle. Will OpenAI become the door to the Internet? You'll need people to stop using Google Search and rely on ChatGPT for that to happen. Will become a commodity. Short term you can charge a subscription but long term will most likely become a commondity with advertising.
The second is tangible. My company is plugged directly to the OpenAI API. We build on it. Still very early and not so robust. But getting better and cheaper and faster over time. Active development. No reason to switch to something else as long as OpenAI leads the pack.
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