Posted by lukasgross 7 days ago
https://www.reuters.com/technology/googles-gemini-co-lead-no...
Besides that, Google is in a pretty good position, they're not bleeding money on AI like Anthropic/OpenAI, and they own product verticals where they can integrate it. Plus they have a mature ads-model which is what might actually drive a bit of revenue for LLMs.
I'm no super-insider, I only hear industry scuttlebutt like everyone else, but I have about a 95% confidence that the last 18 months has just been about more and better, without any kind of real leap or breakthrough. More hardware, more data, better technique. Well, technique diffuses as people change companies, hardware can be built, and data can be gathered (or stolen!).
From my admittedly outsider perspective, the only years-long moat there is who has the most hardware. If you have the hardware, you can give away the compute to get the data (hello, subsidized subscriptions!). Technique can simply be hired. The only durable, multi-year advantage is the hardware.
So is that a moat? Sure, but it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the leading model companies of the moment. ASML is the real moat, and so it's ASML China is besieging, correctly (IMO) identifying that everything else can be caught up easily enough.
Check back in a few years...
Don't we all want to (automatically) and passively invest in a company losing billions of dollars ?
At least we can diversify our portfolio from SpaceX.
That's their moat.
Maybe also stolen copyrighted content that cannot be found anywhere else now, so they are the only ones who can train on it.
Grabbing market-share if you have investors that are ready to burn cash infinetely. Find a hot niche, buy a banana 1 USD, sell it for 0.10 USD.
Example: Cursor, they became popular because they were selling ChatGPT unlimited for 20 USD / month.
When they launched, just a reskinned VS Code, "fastest growing AI company"
No coincidence they were bought by SpaceX, who wants to consolidate revenue even if non-sense as long it helps other investors to exit. It shows rapid growth.
Profit is the real moat.
One example: Nvidia. Proprietary tooling, proprietary IP, proprietary hardware, no alternative, expensive.
You don't know what Cursor's game plan was. Maybe acquisition was their plan.
Buying at $1 and selling for $0.1 is still viable as long as they have money in the bank, until they achieve their goals. Most startups start out that way. Even giving away their services for free.
Obviously there will be failures. Doesn't mean they have no moat. Can you say a business with 100 customers and $1000 debt is less viable than one with a single customer and no debt?
Possibly true. Any smart innovations developed by one organization will be smuggled into others.
Training, inferring, and data collection, infrastructures are definitely moats. High-volume usage feedback is also hard to come by for new entrants.
Noam has a deep expertise in these systems at every level, both algorithmically and at production scale, and knows how to leverage things at different levels.
It's not like Google won't have anyone else that can do what he does, but at the same time, it's an implicit criticism of Google's culture, operations, development, and overall AI program. Shazeer is well past the point where the paycheck is the deciding factor, although I'm certain he is very well paid. Having the freedom to innovate and build free from the corporate fuckery of Google and Facebook is probably more valuable than the pay raise he got with the move, and OAI has the advantage of not having to cope with decades of corporate cruft and inertia. They'll get there - all corporations do - but they're relatively young enough to still be nimble.
As do thousands of people say this point. You think the head of deepseek doesn't?
1. There are already multiple "sota" models on the market that compete with only marginal gains between them (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google/Gemini) and some that are catching up (DeepSeek, Qwen,..).
2. The fact that something is a hard engineering problem does not mean it's generating revenue. So while what you said is true, deep expertise is required to push the industry forward, I don't think that is going to matter for the bottom line of these companies. Hence why I think the models don't give a company any 'moat' in a capitalist economy.
Question two: Why are OpenAI spending that money taking talent from Google, who can definitely outspend them for talent, and not Anthropic, who are leading the market and are at least somewhat financially constrained.
But I'm sure for at least some folks, this is true, given recent valuations.
Because I think as far as running the existing models and handling whatever nuances, it must be well understood by oai and ANT -- but you don't what you don't know.
But money at that level isn't about being financially secure - to have a roof over your head and food to eat - it's about power.
Money at that level gives you the ability to shape the world in ways others can only dream of - whether that be starting your own company where you can set the values, funding a cure for Malaria, or political lobbying.
Depends on whether the person in question has strong views and a strong belief that they are in the right.
Full disclaimer - I have no insight or knowledge about this particular person - just making the rather obvious and general case that joining OpenAI now at a senior level is likely to generate a serious windfall, and such a windfall is power.
As I said, no idea what motivates this particular person - don't know them at all - the money may be entirely coincidental and it's all about getting stuff done - but he did choose OpenAI rather than somebody like Anthropic....
Karpathy to Anthropic, now Noam to OpenAI.
He could raise and build his own company. But the ability to attract the level of talent that Google/Anthropic/OpenAI have is a different story.
Although I can't fathom why we'd want to? Like what is the advantage of giving tools sentience?
And Deepminds Demis Hassabis was the single other? Or were there more?
So didn’t they get on? The latter is in London so time difference to put up with too
I always appreciated Jeff having a level head ... which this article seems to confirm:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/google-cracks-down-posts...
I've seen engmisc and industryinfo, and I agree they are sometimes insufferable but having a level head would be ignoring them.
What they're working on is just making peoples jobs, skills obsolete and trying to invent machines that will concentrate the worlds wealth into the hands of the people who own those machines.
Popular entertainment and unique progress of human civilization can’t be really compared either
I'd argue that professional sport is the closest thing to a true meritocracy - doesn't matter who your Dad knows - you ability is there for all to see on the pitch.
And at the team level - if cosy cliques form, again - team performance doesn't lie - hard work, team work and talent is ultimately what delivers results on the pitch.
The other interesting part of professional sport is that the 'workers' have managed to capture more of the value than is traditionally the case - this is precisely because they are so hard to replace.
If you think professional footballers earn too much and are interchangable - feel free to try and get in the team.
So take this scenario - I'd argue that if you want to make progress in the field of these particular ML models, then you are going to need resources ( compute/data etc ) that is beyond most individuals capability to muster. ie you have to join a company with resources ( or persuade somebody to give you them ).
Right now there is one of those scenarios where capital is chasing talent - and so talent, if they are so inclined, is able to make the most of that.
But in normal times that's typically not the case - most of the time scientists are chasing the capital ( directly or indirectly in the form of a job in a well resourced company ) in order to be able to science, rather than the other way around.
To become a good scientist you don’t need much classic capital, you need a good environment. And for ML you only need one computer for yourself or you can rent online
There are still big inefficiencies for those who have capital to discover good scientists / engineers. Lots of them are unknown.
But if there are top ones famous it will bring more people to study those fields
The way it works in academia is that scientists compete with each other for the limited capital ( grant funding and jobs ). Not the other way around.
> But if there are top ones famous it will bring more people to study those fields
Is the problem lack of talent in these fields or the narrow allocation of capital?
Is it really true that Noam is the only person in the world that could have done what he did or where their in fact lots of people who would have succeed given the same opportunities?
That's not to devalue what they did or the impact - and I'm all for recognising the contributions of scientists to society - but the reality is, for the most part, talent competes for capital rather than the other way around.
I'd also point out that I suspect the high profile appointments of people like Noam and John to OpenAI and Anthropic is as much to do with adding star quality to the IPO as much bringing in talent ( and that's not to diminish their talent ).
This is good.
I don’t care that some are jealous of him because they think they are as good as him in linear algebra.
The existence of pay-per-view sports TV wasn't a pre-requisite for professional football - that existed way before - clubs self funded from gate receipts, local business sponsorship - they grew out of the local communities.
Sure, global TV has brought in the big money, but it wasn't required for the game to exist - but the opposite is true - pay-per-view sports TV is very dependent on sports like football.
> To become a good scientist you don’t need much classic capital, you need a good environment.
Pretty much all scientists learn their craft doing a government funded PhD in government funded labs using government funded equipment. ie governments provide the capital. People simply aren't self taught.
> And for ML you only need one computer for yourself or you can rent online
In theory - but modern AI is so resource intensive, good luck competing with the likes of Google/OpenAI, even Deepseek like that.
We need to make science more popular
We disagree on learning science and engineers, this doesn’t require physical capital, it only requires human capital
So? The point is football doesn't require this. It's not necessary for football to happen. The first Fifa world cup was in 1930.
> We disagree on learning science and engineers, this doesn’t require physical capital, it only requires human capital
Try building a bridge without any money. Try detecting the Higgs Boson without CERN. Sure Peter Higgs can come up with the idea of the Higgs Boson with little capital ( though somebody still paid for his living expenses - he wasn't a self funded gentlemen scientist ) - but that's the exception - most of the work is like CERN - and requires significant equipment and capital.
It's funny, but with the AI hires/moves it feels more like satire now.