Well I think you’re correct that they know the jig is up, but I would say they know the AI bubble is about to burst so they want to cash out before that happens.
There is little to no money to be made in GAI, it will never turn into AGI, and people like Altman know this, so now they’re looking for a greater fool before it is too late.
AI companies are already automating huge swaths of document analysis, customer service. Doctors are straight up using ChatGPT to diagnose patients. I know it’s fun to imagine AI is some big scam like crypto, but you’d have to be ignoring a lot of genuine non hype economic movement at this point to assume GAI isn’t making any money.
Why does the forum of an incubator that now has a portfolio that is like 80% AI so routinely bearish on AI? Is it a fear of irrelevance?
> AI companies are already automating huge swaths of document analysis, customer service. Doctors are straight up using ChatGPT to diagnose patients
I don't think there is serious argument that LLMs won't generate tremendous value. The question is who will capture it. PCs generated massive value. But other than a handful of manufacturers and designers (namely, Apple, HP, Lenovo, Dell and ASUS), most PC builders went bankrupt. And out of the value generated by PCs in the world, the vast majority was captured by other businesses and consumers.
Doctors were using Google to diagnose patients before. The thing is, it's still the doctor delivering the diagnosis, the doctor writing the prescription, and the doctor billing insurance. Unless and until patients or hospitals are willing and legally able to use ChatGPT as a replacement for a doctor (unwise), ChatGPT is not about to eat any doctor's lunch.
Not OP, but I think this makes the point, not argues against it. Something has come along that can supplant Google for a wide range of things. And it comes without ads (for now). It’s an opportunity to try a different business model, and if they succeed at that then it’s off to the races indeed.
When the wright brothers made their plane they didn't expect today that there are thousands of planes flying at a time.
When the Internet was developed they didn't imagine the world wide Web.
When cars started to get popular people still thought there would be those who are going to stick with horses.
I think you're right on the AI we're just on the cusp of it and it'll be a hundred times bigger than we can imagine.
Back when oil was discovered and started to be used it was about equal to 500 laborers now automated. One AI computer with some video cards are now worth x number of knowledge workers. That never stop working as long as the electricity keeps flowing.
They did actually imagine the World Wide Web at the time of developing the first computer networks. This is one of the most obvious outcomes of a system of networked devices.
Even five years into this "AI revolution," the boosters haven't been able to paint a coherent picture of what AI could reasonably deliver – and they've delivered even less.
Lol they are not using ChatGPT for the full diagnosis. They're used in steps of double checking knowledge like drug interactions and such. If you're gonna speak on something like this in a vague manner I'd suggest you google this stuff first. I can tell you for certain that that part in particular is a highly inaccurate statement.
The article you posted describes a patient using ChatGPT to get a second opinion from what their doctor told them, not the doctor themself using ChatGPT.
The article could just as easily be about “Delayed diagnosis of a transient ischemic attack caused by talking to some rando on Reddit” and it would be just as (non) newsworthy.
People aren't saying that AI as a tool is going to go bust. Instead, people are saying that this practice of spending 100s of millions, or even billions of dollars on training massive models is going bust.
AI isn't going to be the world changing, AGI, that was sold to the public. Instead, it will simply be another B2B SaaS product. Useful, for sure. Even profitable for startups.
They made $4 billion last year, not really "little to no money". I agree it's not clear they can justify their valuation but it's certainly not a bubble.
But didn't they spend $9 billion? If I have a machine that magically turns $9 billion of investor money into $4 billion in revenue, I need to have a pretty awesome story for how in the future I am going to be making enormous piles of money to pay back that investment. If it looks like frontier models are going to be a commodity and it is not going to be winner-take-all... that's a lot harder story to tell.
There is a pretty significant different between “buy $9 for $4” and selling a service that costs $9 to build and run per year for $4 per year. Especially when some people think that service could be an absolute game changer for the species.
It’s ok to not buy into the vision or think it’s impossible. But it’s a shallow dismissal to make the unnuanced comparison, especially when we’re talking about a brand new technology - who knows what the cost optimization levers are. Who knows what the market will bear after a few more revs.
When the iPhone first came out, it was too expensive, didn’t do enough, and many people thought it was a waste of apples time when they should be making music players.
It's a commodity technology and VCs are investing as if this were still a winner-takes-all play. It's obviously not, if there were any doubt about that, Deepseek's R1 release should have made it obvious.
> But it’s a shallow dismissal to make the unnuanced comparison, especially when we’re talking about a brand new technology - who knows what the cost optimization levers are. Who knows what the market will bear after a few more revs.
You're acting as-if OpenAI is still the only player in this space. OpenAI has plenty of competitors who can deliver similar models for cheaper. Gemini 2.5 is an excellent and affordable model and Google has a substantially better capacity to scale because of a multi-year investment in its TPUs.
Whatever first mover advantage OpenAI had has been quickly eliminated, they've lost a lot of their talent, and the chief hypothesis they used to attract the capital they've raised so far is utterly wrong. VCs would be mad to be continuing to pump money into OpenAI just to extend their runway -- at 5 Bln losses per year they need to actually consider cost, especially when their frontier releases are only marginal improvements over competitors.
... this is a bubble despite the promise of the technology and anyone paying attention can see it. For all of the dumb money employed in this space to make it out alive, we'll have to at least see a fairly strong form of AGI developed, and by that point the tech will be threatening the general economic stability of the US consumer.
Every new tech has companies start and fail, as the consumer market changes and things are tried and fail. There’s no way to predict ahead of time what will work, what won’t - and so a thousand ships are launched with only a few reaching shore.
Is that a bubble? I suppose it is; it’s also probably the right strategy.
> When the iPhone first came out, it was too expensive, didn’t do enough, and many people thought it was a waste of apples time when they should be making music players.
This comparison is always used when people are trying to hype something. For every "iPhone" there are thousands of failures
> I started a business that would give people back $9 if they gave me $4
I feel like people overuse this criticism. That's not the only way that companies with a lot of revenue lose money. And this isn't at all what OpenAI is doing, at least from their customers' perspective. It's not like customers are subscribing to ChatGPT simply because it gives them something they were going to buy anyway for cheaper.
There is little to no money to be made in GAI, it will never turn into AGI, and people like Altman know this, so now they’re looking for a greater fool before it is too late.