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0 pointsnoch1y ago0 comments

> There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat.

Gruber writes:

" My take on OpenAI is that both of the following are true:

OpenAI currently offers, by far, the best product experience of any AI chatbot assistant. There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. "

It's amusing to me that he seems to think that OpenAI (or xAI or DeepSeek or DeepMind) is in the business of building "chatbots".

The prize is the ability to manufacture intelligence.

How much risk investors are willing to undertake for this prize is evident from their investments, after all, these investors all lived through prior business cycles and bubbles and have the institutional knowledge to know what they're getting into, financially.

How much would you invest for a given probability that the company you invest in will be able to manufacture intelligence at scale in 10 years?

0 comments

swiftcoder1y ago

> How much would you invest for a given probability that the company you invest in will be able to manufacture intelligence at scale in 10 years?

What's the expected return on investment for "intelligence"? This is extremely hard to quantify, and if you listen to the AI-doomer folks, potentially an extremely negative return.

nochOP1y ago

> What's the expected return on investment for "intelligence"? This is extremely hard to quantify […] if you listen to the AI-doomer folks, potentially an extremely negative return.

Indeed. And that asymmetry is what makes a market: people who can more accurately quantify the value or risk of stuff are the ones who win.

If it were easy then we'd all invest in the nearest AI startup or short the entire market and 100x our net worth essentially overnight.

ben_w1y ago

That logic applies for AI-cynics rather than AI-doomers — the latter are metaphorically the equivalent of warning about CO2-induced warming causing loss of ice caps and consequent sea level rises and loss of tens of trillions of dollars of real estate as costal cities are destroyed… in 1896*, when it was already possible to predict, but we were a long way from both the danger and the zeitgeist to care.

But only metaphorically the equivalent, as the maximum downside is much worse than that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

2 more replies

jay_kyburz1y ago

The race to singularity.

Will it bring untold wealth to its masters, or will it slip its leash and seek its own agenda.

Once you have an AI that can actually write code, what will it be able to do with its own source? How much better would open AI be with a super intelligence looking for efficiencies and improvements?

What will the super intelligence (and or its masters) do to build that moat and secure its position?

n_ary1y ago

> How much risk investors are willing to undertake for this prize is evident from their investments, after all, these investors all lived through prior business cycles and bubbles and have the institutional knowledge to know what they're getting into, financially.

There are not that many unicorns these days, so anyone missing out on last unicorn decades are now in immense FOMO and is willing to bet big. Besides, AGI is considered(own opinion) personal skynet(wet dream of all nations’ military) that will do your bidding. Hence everyone wants a piece of that Pie. Also when the bigCo(M$/Google/Meta) are willing to bet on it, makes the topic much more interesting and puts invisible seal of approval from technically savvy corps, as the previous scammy cryptocurrency gold rush was not participated by any bigCo(to best of my knowledge) but GenAI is full game with all.

lodovic1y ago

Part of the risk is the possibility that a few key employees find a much more profitable business model and leave OpenAI, while the early investors are left holding the bag. This seems to be a recurring theme in the tech world.

nochOP1y ago

> Part of the risk is the possibility that a few key employees find a much more profitable business model and leave OpenAI,

The fact that you can state this risk means that market participants already know this risk and account for it in their investment model. Usually employees are given stock options (or something similar to a vesting instrument) to align them with the company, that is, they lose[^1] significant wealth if they leave the company. In the case of OpenAI: "PPUs vest evenly over 4 years (25% per year). Unlike stock options, employees do not need to purchase PPUs […] PPUs also are restricted by a 2-year lock, meaning that if there’s a liquidation event, a new hire can’t sell their units within their first 2 years."[^0]

[0]: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

[1]: Ex-OpenAI employee reported losing 85% of his family's net worth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40406307

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0 pointsnoch1y ago0 comments

> There is no technical moat, but that doesn't mean there isn't a moat.

Gruber writes:

" My take on OpenAI is that both of the following are true:

OpenAI currently offers, by far, the best product experience of any AI chatbot assistant. There is no technical moat in this field, and so OpenAI is the epicenter of an investment bubble. "

It's amusing to me that he seems to think that OpenAI (or xAI or DeepSeek or DeepMind) is in the business of building "chatbots".

The prize is the ability to manufacture intelligence.

How much would you invest for a given probability that the company you invest in will be able to manufacture intelligence at scale in 10 years?

0 comments

swiftcoder1y ago

> How much would you invest for a given probability that the company you invest in will be able to manufacture intelligence at scale in 10 years?

What's the expected return on investment for "intelligence"? This is extremely hard to quantify, and if you listen to the AI-doomer folks, potentially an extremely negative return.

nochOP1y ago

> What's the expected return on investment for "intelligence"? This is extremely hard to quantify […] if you listen to the AI-doomer folks, potentially an extremely negative return.

Indeed. And that asymmetry is what makes a market: people who can more accurately quantify the value or risk of stuff are the ones who win.

If it were easy then we'd all invest in the nearest AI startup or short the entire market and 100x our net worth essentially overnight.

ben_w1y ago

But only metaphorically the equivalent, as the maximum downside is much worse than that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

2 more replies

jay_kyburz1y ago

The race to singularity.

Will it bring untold wealth to its masters, or will it slip its leash and seek its own agenda.

Once you have an AI that can actually write code, what will it be able to do with its own source? How much better would open AI be with a super intelligence looking for efficiencies and improvements?

What will the super intelligence (and or its masters) do to build that moat and secure its position?

n_ary1y ago

lodovic1y ago

nochOP1y ago

> Part of the risk is the possibility that a few key employees find a much more profitable business model and leave OpenAI,

[0]: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

[1]: Ex-OpenAI employee reported losing 85% of his family's net worth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40406307

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