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0 pointsren_engineer3y ago0 comments

genius strategy by OpenAI to give their "customers" access to lower quality models to show what end users want, then rugpull them by building out clones of those developer's products with a better model

Similar to what Facebook and Twitter did, just clone popular projects built using the API and build it directly into the product while restricting the API over time. Anybody using OpenAI APIs is basically just paying to do product research for OpenAI at this point. This type of move does give OpenAI competitors a chance if they provide a similar quality base model and don't actively compete with their users, this might be Google's best option rather than trying to compete with ChatGPT directly. No major companies are going to want to provide OpenAI more data to eat their own lunch

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the88doctor3y ago

Long term, you're right. But if you approach the ChatGPT plugin opportunity as an inherently time-limited opportunity (like arbitrage in finance), then you you can still make some short-term money and learn about AI in the process. Not a bad route for aspiring entrepreneurs who are currently in college or are looking for a side gig business experiment.

And who knows. If a plugin is successful enough, you might even swap out the OpenAI backend for an open source alternative before OpenAI clones you.

plutonorm3y ago

There is no route to making money with these plugins. You have to get the users onto your website, sign-up, part with money, then go back to gptchat. It's really hard to make that happen, this is going to be much more useful for existing businesses adding functionality to existing projects. Or random devs just making stuff. Making fast money out of it, it seems v difficult.

rvz3y ago

> It's really hard to make that happen, this is going to be much more useful for existing businesses adding functionality to existing projects. Or random devs just making stuff. Making fast money out of it, it seems v difficult.

Absolutely correct. This is what the AI hype squad and the HN bubble misses again. This is only useful to existing businesses (summarization the only safe use-case) or random devs automating themselves out of irrelevance. All of this 'euphoria' is around for Microsoft's heavy marketing from its newly acquired AI division.

This is a obvious text book example of mindshare capture and ecosystem lock-in. Eventually, OpenAI will just slowly raise prices and break / deprecate older models to move them onto newer ones and pay to continue using them. It is the same decade old tactics.

lupire3y ago

Amazon retail is the king of this. Offer services to companies, collect their details, and then clone their business.

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