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Comment by strangattractor | Hacker News Reader

My own perception of OpenAI vs Google seems at odds with many things I read. I don't really see Google as being behind at all.

1. Google pretty much invented the technology (https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)

2. In order to create the models one needs lots of compute and access to a lot of text. Google scores higher than OpenAI on both counts.

3. New models are released on a weekly basis by all sorts of companies. So OpenAI has no monopoly on LLM models. In fact their competition is staggering (NVIDIA, Meta, Google, DataBricks, Amazon (numerous other startups)) It will not be long before there are even more.

It seems to me that Altman saw this all as a timing thing. Reveal your cards now and force others to do the same in the hopes of obtaining a strategic position over competitors. Googles cashflow seems to be doing just fine and I haven't had to fight off any urges to use Bing.

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You’re missing the final point - the use case beyond Chat. Google has search, GMail, Android, Docs, Developer Tools, etc

Google can put an LLM into everything and sell it. Not just a chatbot. OpenAI can sell theirs to consumers as a chat bot or an API. Google can out monetize them handily.

The best thing Google can do (which it’s starting to do) is open up access to LLMs. And help everyone else do the same. Give it away and flood the internet with more LLaMAs, more Groks, more CLIPs, more Hermes, more Mistal, more SIGLIPS, etc. If they just drown out the competition, and turn good enough” models into a true commodity, they’ll dethrone OpenAI easily.

Also no one mentions YouTube. Surely that data is a massive untapped opportunity. We saw the multi-modal abilities of Gemini today. A few years from now, and some better GPUs, and it might be able to handle video in real-time.

No. The best model wins. I’m currently paying $20/mo for all three leading models (GPT4, Opus, and Ultra). But in the future, when GPT5/Opus2/Ultra1.5 come out, I expect the prices to go up. So I will be choosing the best one. Whatever is on the top of the leaderboard will get my $200/mo (maybe even $2k/mo if it’s really smart).

This is forward looking. Models need to keep getting better. That takes research, and compute, and data. It’s not free, and it’s getting increasingly expensive.

I too pay for multiple services (Gemini, Claude, CodePilot). Not everyone can or will pay $2k, or $200, or even $20 for a massive model. And most flagship models today are significantly better than models 6mo ago, which were already transformative and valuable on their own. There is a huge opportunity to market “good enough” models for tasks that don’t require the latest and greatest abilities (eg summarize this list, write an email). Arguably, we already have much smaller and simpler models for a lot of these tasks.

There is a market for $20/mo assistants, but the potential market for “everything else” is much bigger - and assistants will be moving towards running locally where possible. These companies are burning billions, they’re going to need a bigger revenue prize for investors. And that’s integration of LLMs and AI into every other software product. The less of those products that run with OpenAI models, the less income OpenAI has to compete, and the harder it will be to keep up. That’s why the opportunity exists for big tech companies can flood the market with good but smaller models and ruin opportunities for cash flow to build the better models.

If the next gen of the top models improves as much as I hope they will - we will not need any integration. It will be similar to hiring a human personal assistant. But much cheaper, even at $2k/mo. Even if this doesn’t happen with GPT5, it can very well happen with GPT6 a year later.

> 1. Google pretty much invented the technology (https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)

> 2. In order to create the models one needs lots of compute and access to a lot of text. Google scores higher than OpenAI on both counts.

If a smaller company with less compute and data commercializes something before Google which has more compute and data, doesn't that mean they are behind? You don't measure a car race by fuel available in the pit and faster top speed. You measure by who gets to the finish first. It just goes to show that Google has a horrible driver.

I guess the point is this is a very long race and, actually, the end is still quite far away (if that end is AGI).

In his Lex Friedman interview Altman asks ‘what has ChatGPT really fundamentally changed about the world?’ - basically making the point that they’re still just getting started.

Having a tonne of compute and cash is still going to be really important in this race. You have to make it to the finish line to win.

Part of the point I was trying to make is that there is less benefit to Google to tout their advances - most of this are trade secrets. I could see them using it to enhance their current offerings in subtle ways.

Now that the cat is out of the bag that will likely change. Just because OpenAI publicly released a produce doesn't mean Google has not developed their own. It doesn't mean they have either.

These models still have a long way to go before they can advise Kirk on running the Enterprise:)

Well said.

While everyone is hyper-focused on LLMs, Google is able to do more than that and imagine what Google DeepMind has not announced yet.

> It seems to me that Altman saw this all as a timing thing. Reveal your cards now and force others to do the same in the hopes of obtaining a strategic position over competitors. Googles cashflow seems to be doing just fine and I haven't had to fight off any urges to use Bing.

LLMs are something that is already played out to the first movers. Google has already caught up and the moat and monopoly has been evaporated.

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