Tech really can’t see begging for more money from VC’s as nothing short of a revolution, rolls eyes.
I can’t believe he invented Markdown, one of the most genuine amazing things to come out of languages and the like, especially after what I just read.
JOHN GRUBER wrote a… thing? About Open AI’s begging of more money they absolutely don’t need. I stopped reading at this paragraph. Maybe he proves me wrong in the latter parts of the post, but this paragraph sure as shit did nothing to convince me he’s worth keeping up with for serious tech journalism.
> Thus, effectively, OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution. The revolution is real, but it’s ultimately going to be a commodity technology layer, not the foundation of a defensible proprietary moat. In 1995 investors mistakenly thought investing in Netscape was a way to bet on the future of the open internet and the World Wide Web in particular. Investing in OpenAI today is a bit like that — generative AI technology has a bright future and is transforming the world, but it’s wishful thinking that the breakthrough client implementation is going to form the basis of a lasting industry titan.
I mean, if you wanna read it, have at it, but I simply have to know, where does his journalism shine?
I think his criticism of the economics and business sense is pretty reasonable, even though he is definitely being pretty credulous about the capabilities of the underlying tech. One of the fun side effects of the diminishing returns in raw scaling is that the competitors are rapidly catching up with the capabilities of ChatGPT, which is going to be bad news for Saltman and the gang. What goes unaddressed is the bigger underlying problem; these systems don’t actually do what they’re being advertised for and burn an unsustainable and unconscionable amount of money (and actual resources in case anyone forgot) to do it. That’s going to be the difference between OpenAI falling apart and being overtaken by another company with better monetization or the entire tech sector facing a recession, and I’m pretty sure the latter is more likely.