> and the best monetization plans is ads.... Again?

Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads, and OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you expecting?

That's why local LLMs are important, and to preserve the current open weight models, because those are likely still untainted by ads. It won't be long until ad recommendations are directly baked into the weights of open models.

> Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads, and OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you expecting?

I'm old enough to remember when these people were claiming AI was as important and as revolutionary as fire and electricity. I don't know about you, but I pay for my electricity and the power companies don't have to run ads on my power lines in order to run their business.

And that's all you really need to know about this AI grift.

They probably would if they could. That gives me some bad ideas - you could vary the line frequency to play the McDonald's 'I'm Lovin It' jingle, etc.- good thing I'm not involved with either ads or power delivery.

Don't forget morse code

You could make this work! I saw a project once that used some open uk power grid information to triangulate videos by listening to the background hum. Genius but also a real "oh god what have we done" moment for me.

Good luck with your new ad business lol

i bet these adblocker and ublocks those day will play them anyway: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adblock-for-chatgpt...

Annnd I’m old enough to remember last weeks Superbowl ad controversy :)

It’s not like “OpenAI == AI”

One could possibly make the case that currently that is the public perception (outside the SV bubble). But is it really true?

Last time I checked Dario staked Anthropic’s future and reputation, on paid subscription.

> Last time I checked Dario staked Anthropic’s future and reputation, on paid subscription.

Tech CEOs might be wealthy and powerful but there are two things they definitely don't have anymore: trust and the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, maybe Dario is gonna be the exception to the rule but I doubt it.

Fair and share same concerns

The track record of the really big CEOs has been less than super good nervous sweating

Maybe I’m being naive, but there a few good ones (smaller and mid tier size) out there imo

> Maybe I’m being naive, but there a few good ones (smaller and mid tier size) out there imo

Don't disagree. I think scale and ambitions play a huge role.

I wasn't expecting anything else, because I think Sam Altman is a conman. Let's not forget Altman lambasting ads, and telling us how they were a last restort for OpenAI. So are we there yet? Are we willing to admit that OpenAI is a failing company?

Failing or not, there's no way to justify their current spend without saying the words "massive" and "bubble".

> What else were you expecting?

some of us were hoping for actual innovation, not more ads

I think today's LLMs and their derivatives (agents,.. ) are an impressive technological/research achievement with amazing real-world utility. Innovation at its best. I don't see the enshittification of commercial products based upon LLMs as taking away from that. Like I said, I see the potential of this technology in the local/open weights model space. Yes, those are currently noticeably behind the commercial offerings. But that's not a fundamental problem. It's not a race. If we keep improving open products they can one day match if not exceed the commercial options. A bit like open source desktop environments/operating systems - it took a while, but now the OSS options can arguably match if not beat the commercial ones.

For forms of income. E.g. with paid apps/gadgets/tools for everyday use (outside of dev tools) with chatgpt embedded.

Great observation, and thank you for pointing that out. I deployed a new MR for that using the awesome YASaaS for only 17.99/mo to create QR codes in your NextJS website. Using your company credit card to a new platform tied directly to your bun dependencies to pay for all your library subscriptions. Would you like me to tell you how much you'll spend this month?

Local LLM models? It'd sure be a shame if enterprise buyers cornered the market on RAM, GPU and storage supplies and put them out of reach for consumers.

Are they not trained on, e.g., reddit, which is at least half brand astroturfing already?

> and the best monetization plan is ads.... Again?

Their monetization plan is to have ad-free subscription options from $20 to $200/month and an API which charges by token.

These ads are for the free and new low-cost ad-subsidized tier that comes in below their existing $20/month plan.

But they could make more money if they show the ads to everyone.

E.g like Amazon prime.

For now, but they'd be stupid to not push ads on all their tiers.

You know what's better than 20 bucks a month? 20 bucks a month and ads.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Their valuation is dumb no matter what but you've got to think it's based off of the potential for B2B / gov revenue, not monetizing the consumer facing stuff directly.

Which is to say I feel like they're going to use ads on the consumer stuff just to stop bleeding out VC money as quickly, but nobody's deluded enough to think this is going to bring them much closer to profitability overall.

Ads are they only way to make a lot of money on the internet.

And therein lies the problem, not the ads, but "make a lot of money". Maybe, just maybe, you don't always need to make a lot of money, maybe you just need a nice sustainable business, providing value to happy customers.

That ship has sailed for OpenAI long ago, because they burned money faster than an alcoholic sailor on shore leave. There is no sane way for them to ever recover.

Yeah, OpenAI was in theory founded to avoid the kind of economic moral hazards that would inevitably lead to an outcome like this, but Sam Altman saw dollar signs followed by lots of zeros, dangled them in front of engineers and from then on the "non-profit" board never stood a chance. So here we are.

Indeed. What advertisers want is chatbot that works as a sales rep, and this is the sort of thing LLMs can be really really good at. Money talks.

Its like how even nuclear reactors still just boil water. Its kinda funny.

Whats the solar of monetization?

Are microtransactions still on the table?

Only if some smart companies start and keep choosing long term customer satisfaction over dollar measured growth.

If take away ads as a "business model" then what happens to "Big Tech"

Castles made of sand...