this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 235 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

"I personally chose the price"

Is that how well-run companies operate? The CEO unilaterally decides the price rather than delegating that out to the numbers people they employ?

[–] aviationeast 96 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Should have asked chatgpt to play the role of a CEO.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

This answer would be much funnier if that wasn't his fucking plan.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

A real ceo does everything. Delegation is for losers who can’t cope. Can’t move fast enough and break enough things if you’re constantly waiting for your lackeys to catch up.

If those numbers people were cleverer than the ceo, they’d be the ones in charge, and they aren’t. Checkmate. Do you even read Ayn Rand, bro?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

far, far, far, far, far, far, far fewer business people than you’d expect/guess are data-driven decision makers

and then there’s the whole bayfucker ceo dynamic which adds a whole bunch of extra dumb shit

it’d be funnier if it weren’t for the tunguska-like effect it’s having on human society both at present and in the coming decades to follow :|

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[–] lobut 27 points 2 weeks ago

I think I remember Jeff Bezos in "The Everything Store" book seeing a price they charged for AWS and went even lower for growth. So there could be some rationale for that? However, I think switching AI providers is easier than Cloud Providers? Not sure though.

I can imagine the highest users of this being scam artists and stuff though.

I want this AI hype train to die.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 2 weeks ago (25 children)

CEO personally chose a price too low for company to be profitable.

What a clown.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They're still in the first stage of enshittification: gaining market share. In fact, this is probably all just a marketing scheme. "Hi! I'm Crazy Sam Altman and my prices are SO LOW that I'm LOSING MONEY!! Tell your friends and subscribe now!"

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I’m afraid it might be more like Uber, or Funko, apparently, as I just learned tonight.

Sustained somehow for decades before finally turning any profit. Pumped full of cash like it’s foie gras by Wall Street. Inorganic as fuck, promoted like hell by Wall Street, VC, and/or private equity.

Shoved down our throats in the end.

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[–] rockSlayer 87 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The plagiarism power virus is too expensive to operate? I'm shocked I tell you

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[–] edgemaster72 67 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

losing money because people are using it more than expected

"I personally chose the price and thought we would make some money."

Big MoviePass energy

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[–] renzev 66 points 2 weeks ago (17 children)

Much like uber and netflix, all of these ai chatbots that are available for free right now will become expensive, slow, and dumb once the investor money runs out and these companies have to figure out a business model. We're in the golden age of LLMs right now, all we can do is enjoy the free service while it lasts and try not to make it too much a part of our workflow, because inevitably it will be cut off. Unless you're one of those people with a self-hosted LLM I guess.

[–] stoly 26 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Not LLM but there Google Assistant has gotten much more stupid over the past several years. They realized that it was too expensive and had to lobotomize it.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

This. AI Hype beasts keep saying "This is the worst AI will ever be" and "It'll just get better" but really it's just going to get worse as they actually try to turn the bubble into a profit

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

What are people using the $200 plan for that makes it worth it? You only get their model with their training, you don't have any access to weights or training. And with how nerfed openai makes its models, nothing even remotely nefarious can be done with it. All you can do is process simple data. Which having a purposed trained model seems the most valuable for.

[–] WoodScientist 44 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Probably mostly fake social media profiles and YouTube/Tiktok AI slop.

You could use it to create hundreds of real-looking fake accounts on reddit or other social media site. OpenAI's site doesn't have this kind of fake user function built into its app, but it should be easy enough with an API. Just have a bot randomly scroll reddit's most popular posts. Then have it find the most popular comments on those posts over a certain length. Feed the text of that comment to OpenAI, instructing the LLM to make a disagreeing/concurring/answering reply. Then have the bot post OpenAI's output as a comment on reddit. Have each account comment not at superhuman speed, but at the speed that a normal human user would post.

Use these tools to build up an arsenal of hundreds, perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands of sockpuppet accounts. Each will have years of post history behind them, so they will pass typical subreddit filters like "account must be this old or have X comment karma" to post. Just keep these bots constantly running and available.

Then, when you want to use them, use them. Don't even dramatically switch their persona. Want to use your bot network for politics? Have your 10,000 fake users mostly comment on random banal stuff. But every 10th post or so have them post a comment for whatever politician or cause you support. You might even have them regularly post content of that political persuasion as a normal part of their operation. Same thing with advertising. Have them mostly post random stuff, but have them occasionally post a glowing review for a product, film, or service.

The real use for OpenAI's software is as a vector for very effective and difficult to detect and filter astroturfing campaigns. Hell, just getting your name out there can be advantageous. Are you a nobody, but with a lot of cash, that wants to launch a political career? Higher such a bot net to sprinkle your name across social media. Even if all the bots do is mention you, neither praising or condemning, it gets your name out there. The next election cycle, when people start talking about potential primary candidates for a particular office, real people will suggest your name, simply because they heard it somewhere. Name recognition is a powerful thing.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hmm, we should get together some funds to buy a single unlimited subscription, and then let it continuously generate as large and complex prompts as the rate limitting allows.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago

Buy two. Ask the other to generate expensive prompts.

[–] affiliate 43 points 2 weeks ago

sam altman proving once again that he is not only a tech genius but also a business genius. make sure to let him scan your eyeballs before it’s too late.

[–] thedeadwalking4242 41 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Why is same personally picking subscription prices anyway? Should there be some accountant doing that math? Wtf

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago

Their accountant is probably three GPTs in a trench coat that’s being fed prompts by an unpaid intern or some poor dude in India.

[–] raker 23 points 2 weeks ago

Why is AI not making enough money? I specifically requested it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago

This was my biggest takeaway here. Wtf?! "I personally set the price and thought we would make some money"?! Either he is trying to sound cool by being casual or he is a fucking idiot. Or probably both.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If it worked for Elon and his 8 per blue check, it has to work for our altman boi

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[–] PieMePlenty 39 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Sam, just add sponsored content. The road to enshittification doesn't have to be long! Make it shitty fast so people can move past it and start hosting their own models for their own usage.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This 100% answers my question from another thread. These businesses have cooked the books so bad already that they thought this was gonna save them and it doubled down on em.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I cancelled a 20$ subscription I started because it was arguably useful for me and served exactly one use-case. Now I don't need it anymore.

Of course, they had a form asking feedback/why. I chose "ChatGapT is nott advanced enough" as that was one of the alternatives. Hopefully it will lead to them putting more resources into development and burn through investor money faster.

"Trust me bro, just 200m dollars more"

  • Sam Altman, probably
[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago

Just one more datacenter bro, just one more (that consumes the same power as Belgium.)

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

really looking forward to how these multi-billion dollar AI datacenter investments will work out for big tech companies

that said I'm pretty sure most of that capacity is reserved for the surveillance state anyway

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[–] jacksilver 32 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

This is something I've been speculating for a while. The cost of running these complex systems (as OpenAI models aren't just LLMs) is subsidized so heavily that we don't really know the cost of running these things.

This is a huge risk to any business, as the price for these services has to go up significantly in the long term.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If they are losing money on $200/month, that does not necessarily mean they lose money on the $20/month.

One is unlimited, the other is not. You only have to use the $200 subscription more than 10 times the amount the $20 subscription allows for OpenAI to earn less on that subscription.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

By "Sam Altman said" in a "series of posts", this article means these two tweets from 10 hours ago: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1876104580070813976.
This is a screenshot of a tweet talking about an article written about two tweets by Sam Altman. Is this really the world we're living in, now?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Yeah, and I think you're pretending it's more ridiculous than it is

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Never offer unlimited on a utility model without guardrails. That’s just business 101.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Good. Burn that thing to the ground.

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[–] Rhoeri 23 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Good riddance. We never asked for it, and we didn’t deserve it forced on us.

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[–] stoicmaverick 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Can someone explain the Pale Horse reference?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (18 children)

In the Bible's book of revelations, John (the author) is witnessing the end of the world and sees four horsemen being unleashed upon the world to spread a curse/trial/whatever wherever they ride. Each horseman brings with them something different- famine, disease, war (or strife), and death. Death is the last, IIRC, and rides upon a pale horse. I think that's what they're referencing. This person is saying that openAI is going to die soon.

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