> When you're absolutely killing it

Aren't they unprofitable? and have fierce competition from everyone?

Whether or not you’re profitable has very little to do with how valuable others think you are. And usually having competitors is something that validates your market.

The same can be said about food delivery start ups.

> And usually having competitors is something that validates your market.

Don't users validate your market? ChatGPT has plenty of users, so I would think competitors only hurt their value.

Well, it depends.

Clearly, you can be a company like Microsoft where nobody is challenging your dominance in PC operating systems, and you can make huge sums of money. So competitors certainly aren't vital.

Or if you've cleverly sewn up a market with patents or trade secrets or a giant first-mover advantage or network effects, and nobody's got any chance of challenging your dominance in your specific market niche - again that could be highly profitable.

On the other hand, if you're selling ten-dollar bills for five dollars, you might have millions of satisfied paying customers, but no competitors because nobody else thinks your unit economics make sense. Or if you run a DVD rental store, you might be profitable and have many return customers, but you might not attract competitors because they don't think DVD rental is a growth business.

So some people consider a lack of competition an ominous sign.

> And usually having competitors is something that validates your market

a whole bunch of AI startups were founded around the same time. surely each can't validate the market for the others and be validated by the others in turn

The surviving ones can. The same way that multiple species of trees, growing on the same patch of the ground, desperately competing for sunlight, together validate that the soil underneath is fertile.

Even if they are unprofitable they can get VC money very easily.

Plus they make 20 dollars a month from a lot of people.

When dealing with a tech where people have credible reasons to believe it can be enormously harmful on every possible time scale, maybe it would behoove them to not rocket down the interstate at 200mph?

Thats not what the analogy means. 200mph refers to funding.

No it refers to them moving too fast to send out basic emails for feature updates, per this comment chain.

Then use that funding to hire one PR guy who is 1/4 the expenses of an AI developer?

There is always going to be people who against any new technology and who makes up reasons to be against it.

The best defence is to move so quickly that you are an established part of the business framework by the time these forces can gather, or to go so slowly that nobody takes you as a threat.

No startup can go slowly.

In other words, make your money and ride off into the sunset before anyone can catch on to how much damage you’re doing to society.

Otherwise known as the AirBnB playbook.

No, successfully navigate past this version of Covid vacine deniers, 5g conspiracists etc.

In ten years we will enjoy a higher productivity due to AI and a richer society as a result. We have already seen it with protein folding which AI is amazing at[0].

The only reasonable fear of AI is for some jobs and that China gets their first.

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02083-2

Right, it is perfectly valid to only accept the potential good points while neglecting all the potential bad points.

This is no different then saying "Look, nuclear weapons aren't actually dangerous, if they were we'd all be dead because the apocalypse would have already happened", which is probably the dumbest take on the close calls and real risks that exist.