Both OpenAI and Anthropic are locked into an arms race funded on shaky hype-based debt. They have to constantly push the envelope at the frontier or risk seeing their funding pulled, probably causing a global financial crash in the process which would kill them.
Clearly they've realised that people are increasingly fine with non-frontier models, including Chinese ones. They can't consolidate and just deliver a product to profit because they're constantly being caught up by the Chinese at prices they will never be able to match.
I suspect their main goal for the last year and a half or so was to pull a GM - let the share of the AI economy grow, then have the government bail them out when the debt becomes unsustainable. Clearly Trump would have never let the bubble explode before the midterms, right?
Well it's now clear that the US government has way too much debt right now for 2008-style bailouts, and the market doesnt have the money lying around to buy their overinflated stocks at an IPO. The only avenue realistically left to them is to cry wolf so much to get governments to ban all non-approved models, stop new developments and give them breathing room to consolidate to get their current crop of models profitable at higher prices.
Unfortunately for them I suspect Mr President has way too much dementia and way to little business acumen left to realise the sham going on, so I think they'll keep doing charades for a while until they'll suddenly stop
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49886416
Yawn. Anthropic already pulled this trick.
Don't pull the same con twice...
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are locked into an arms race funded on shaky hype-based debt. They have to constantly push the envelope at the frontier or risk seeing their funding pulled, probably causing a global financial crash in the process which would kill them.
Clearly they've realised that people are increasingly fine with non-frontier models, including Chinese ones. They can't consolidate and just deliver a product to profit because they're constantly being caught up by the Chinese at prices they will never be able to match.
I suspect their main goal for the last year and a half or so was to pull a GM - let the share of the AI economy grow, then have the government bail them out when the debt becomes unsustainable. Clearly Trump would have never let the bubble explode before the midterms, right?
Well it's now clear that the US government has way too much debt right now for 2008-style bailouts, and the market doesnt have the money lying around to buy their overinflated stocks at an IPO. The only avenue realistically left to them is to cry wolf so much to get governments to ban all non-approved models, stop new developments and give them breathing room to consolidate to get their current crop of models profitable at higher prices.
Unfortunately for them I suspect Mr President has way too much dementia and way to little business acumen left to realise the sham going on, so I think they'll keep doing charades for a while until they'll suddenly stop