Sam Altman said ads in ChatGPT would be a “last resort.” That was just over a year ago. Now OpenAI is burning billions monthly, sitting on $1.4 trillion in commitments, with only 5% of users paying. Turns out the last resort came fast when people can’t afford yet another subscription.
On the “figure out what customers want before they do” bit, it’s important to remember that these execs:
- Have their heads all the way up their arses
- have no fucking clue how AI works or what it can do
- Spend 90% of their time only talking to each other.
Source: a long time in retail and tech.
Tech bros see business as building something cool then watching money poor in. I don’t think they can understand actual marketing—as in, knowing a market and what it needs.
AI is an expensive product with a small market. Unless they can charge huge amounts for it or expand the market, it’s a dead product.
Genious business idea to spend billions of dollars and then just expect that people will pay for that, what they mostly do not need and sometimes cannot even afford. While it was possible to spend this money on improving the living conditions of the population, so that there would be more people willing to spend money on AI services, at least as entertainment.
Anyway, I am looking forward to when these data centers will go bankrupt and their owners will be forced to sell server components to return at least part of their spent money.
It’s just a matter of time until companies can pay to influence results, that is if they haven’t already.
