OpenAI's Sam Altman Defends $1 Trillion+ Spending Commitments, Predicts Steep Revenue Growth, More Products (techcrunch.com) 54
TechCrunch reports:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing "well more" than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments.
His comments came up during a joint interview on the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the partnership between their companies. Host Brad Gerstner (who's also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) brought upreports that OpenAI is currently bringing in around $13 billion in revenue — a sizable amount, but one that's dwarfed by more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.
"First of all, we're doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer," Altman said, prompting laughs from Nadella. "I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares."
Altman's answer continued, making the case for OpenAI's business model. "We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it's going to continue to grow and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing. That AI that can automate science will create huge value...
"We carefully plan, we understand where the technology — where the capability — is going to go, and the products we can build around that and the revenue we can generate. We might screw it up — like, this is the bet that we're making, and we're taking a risk along with that." (That bet-with-risks seems to be the $1.4 trillion in spending commitments — but Altman suggests it's offset by another absolutely certain risk: "If we don't have the compute, we will not be able to generate the revenue or make the models at this kind of scale.")
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, added his own defense, "as both a partner and an investor. There has not been a single business plan that I've seen from OpenAI that they have put in and not beaten it. So in some sense, this is the one place where in terms of their growth — and just even the business — it's been unbelievable execution, quite frankly..."
His comments came up during a joint interview on the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the partnership between their companies. Host Brad Gerstner (who's also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) brought upreports that OpenAI is currently bringing in around $13 billion in revenue — a sizable amount, but one that's dwarfed by more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.
"First of all, we're doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer," Altman said, prompting laughs from Nadella. "I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares."
Altman's answer continued, making the case for OpenAI's business model. "We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it's going to continue to grow and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing. That AI that can automate science will create huge value...
"We carefully plan, we understand where the technology — where the capability — is going to go, and the products we can build around that and the revenue we can generate. We might screw it up — like, this is the bet that we're making, and we're taking a risk along with that." (That bet-with-risks seems to be the $1.4 trillion in spending commitments — but Altman suggests it's offset by another absolutely certain risk: "If we don't have the compute, we will not be able to generate the revenue or make the models at this kind of scale.")
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, added his own defense, "as both a partner and an investor. There has not been a single business plan that I've seen from OpenAI that they have put in and not beaten it. So in some sense, this is the one place where in terms of their growth — and just even the business — it's been unbelievable execution, quite frankly..."
Someone help me (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, someone help me if I start to believe my own bullshit to this extent. I really hope that never happens, but if it does, I hope someone calls me on it and that I listen to them.
Re:Someone help me (Score:5, Interesting)
Would you still say this if "believing" your bullshit made you a multi-billionaire?
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Jerry: So, George, how do I beat this lie detector?
George: I'm sorry, Jerry, I can't help you. I can't... It's like saying to Pavarotti, "Teach me to sing like you."
Jerry: All right, well, I gotta go take this test. I can't believe I'm doing this.
George: Jerry, just remember: It's not a lie if you believe it.
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Hehe.
And of course there's the second question that I didn't ask above:
If you did actually become a multi-billionaire by spewing the bullshit that you believed and were called out on it, would you listen?
Or would you go full "pedo guy" and "I believe it is ILLEGAL to CRITICISE ME" on the people who call you out?
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My personal values are such that I don't think I'd get anywhere near the multi-billionaire level on the basis of believing my own bullshit. Chicken and egg problem.
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I hear you, but you're also sort of skirting the question ;)
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I like to think I'd decline. Learning to properly evaluate evidence while writing a master's thesis in a hard science was a formative experience, and I strongly value making decisions on the basis of evidence and reason.
Beyond that, it blows my mind that anyone accumulates more than, say, $10 million and continues to work, much less becomes a billionaire. I would retire tomorrow at a far smaller net worth.
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it blows my mind that anyone accumulates more than, say, $10 million and continues to work, much less becomes a billionaire. I would retire tomorrow at a far smaller net worth.
Fistbump, but apparently those who make it into the cohort can't leave the race. Like you said, it takes a certain mentality, which I'm spared from, although I've seen a lot of it.
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The egg was around millions of years before the chicken.
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OpenAI's Sam Altman Uses /. as his Personal Blog Again
Can there be an option added to the config for people to disable seeing Sam Altman's latest brain fart on the front page every time they log on?
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I guess one can cobble up a javascript scriplet to do it, but I just ignore those, except when I read them for a laugh.
I find the statement that 1 trillion is going to be recovered by products based on chatgpt as very funny and checked to see if there are any good jokes about it.
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I find the statement that 1 trillion is going to be recovered by products based on chatgpt as very funny and checked to see if there are any good jokes about it.
When you were checking for those jokes, didja check ChatGPT, or any other LLMs? Inquiring minds want to know! ;-}
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Nah, I've found their jokes to be kinda lame. But I'll try next time.
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Would you still say this if "believing" your bullshit made you a multi-billionaire?
Altman is a billionaire, but not because of OpenAI. He started a business, sold it for millions, then became a billionaire through Silicon Valley venture capital investing. One should call out though that Altman was very much a Silicon Valley insider with an inside track -- friends connecting him early with the best opportunities. Even a very smart investor who was an outsider would not be able to replicate his wealth acquisition.
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Altman is a billionaire, but not because of OpenAI.
I don't really care about the specifics of someone becoming a billionaire, but in this case a [citation is needed], because from the way it looks on the Wikipedia, he became a billionaire precisely because of Open AI.
The point here is that after amassing a certain amount of money and surrounding yourself with yes-people, you kill any feedback from reality and then there's no way back until you get really poor or imprisoned for fraud.
And since either outcome is very unlikely (the system is skewed towards pre
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...ruling class...
Please! The more (fittingly) pejorative term - which IMO is also the more objectively accurate term - is parasite class.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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Even a very smart investor who was an outsider would not be able to replicate his wealth acquisition.
It's always been way more about who you know than what.
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Do I have to put out a hit on a whistleblower who exposes my illegal business scheme?
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Yes, if it isn't too late. If it is, you also have to consider bribing the investigators, at least the magistrate of the first instance and perhaps buying out the media that has the exclusive and killing it.
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Yes, because billionaires hav eno conceivable reason to exist. The existing ones need to be taxed out of existence.
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Things got so bad during the great depression that the wealthy feared a proper revolution. This enabled the passage of the new deal.
The scenario you're describing seems a little far fetched, but if something like AI were to replace a large percentage of jobs with no ready substitute, I think that could lead to a scenario analogous to the great depression and the new deal.
Now imagine you are so wealthy that you are approaching something akin to godhood.
They remain mortal and still have to eat, drink, piss, and shit like the rest of us.
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So... say, Altman has $50 billion or trillion or whatever... he dies, what happens to that money? Sure, his kids inherit it... what if he didn't have kids? Does it just sit in an offshore account collecting dust? Does the company just use it and keep depositing to it forever?
Automated farms produce the stuff for him to eat, automated breweries and vineyards make the stuff for him to drink, robots deliver his food and cook it and serve it to him... robots keep the sewers functioning so he can piss and shi
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That doesn't help you any though. The kings are still in charge.
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The kings (whoever's in office) might be in charge, in that situation... me (former Boy Scout) and the former Navy Seal (he was also in Black Water) upstairs will be fine... MREs and Alpha Lupus camping, and ham radios will be valuable.
I don't think it'll be a big, obvious revolution thing... if it came to it, someone would find a way to drain Altman's (or whoever) bank account and distribute it to us peons. I guess you could call it a 'silent revolution'... and, it won't matter who's in office (Republican
So in the 1920s they didn't have drones (Score:2)
They don't fear us anymore. They have long since figured out that a little propaganda, a little religious extremism, and a whole lot of violence is all it takes to keep us in line. You can increase any one of those three to a maximum and do away with at least one probably two of them.
It seems far-fetched that the 1% are going to dismantle capitalism because you have been taught that capitalism is invulnerable and immutable.
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Replace workers with "AI"-powered robot arms with some sort of computer vision... there you go, you don't have to pay more than a handful of people to keep the robots going. I can see fully automating burger flipping at McD's.
In that case, the question becomes: how can people whose jobs were replaced by these robots afford to buy stuff?
UBI could work, but that money has to come from someplace; the "former workers" aren't paying into taxes or social security anymore.
Maybe, in some convoluted way, fund the p
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Most people who became successful did it while believing their own bullshit.>p>
Of course, then there are the people who were failures because they believed it
There are a lot more of the latter.
If the tech doesn't progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Like they think it will, they'll be digging there own financial grave. I don't think the costs are justified with LLMs, they just don't operate like humans do, the accuracy sucks. Unless they hit it out if the park there will be an AI bubble.
But 1 trillion is a lot, that could buy yearly salaries of 1 million people at a rate of 1 million dollars a year, so really high caliber workers. Or that's 100000 over 10 years. So they'd better be sure that the tech is going to be the equivalent of that kind of work. If it's not they lost the bet.
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Absolutely. The number is so insane; it's hard to even contemplate. It reminds me that the "con" in con man stands for confidence.
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They just might encounter some resistance hiring the very intelligent army of meatsacks that are smart enough to realize they’re being tasked to create their intellectual replacement, reducing their high caliber status to that of a spring-loaded spud gun.
So far I see virtually no sign of that happening. I'm guessing that all the tech folks shoring up the AI effort either think they'll be the exception to the rule by winding up near the top of the pyramid, or figure they'll be dead by the time the dystopia takes hold. Very few of them imagine they'll be among the great unwashed left holding the burning bag of shit.
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Thats assuming they can replace meatstacks, no one knows if that's possible yet. Based off of current tech, I'd say it isn't. Building an AI that functions like a human is more than scaling up and throwing more data at the problem. No one understands how consciousness works, you can't build a replica if you don't have a design.
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they're playing the too big to fail game. it's worked for them before.
no idea how this will play out but a lot of little people will be devastated before the rich people are wiped out
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It's going to take a few years, when they finally can't generate the revenue they are thinking of and the investors realize it, thats when crap hits the fan. Right now they can promise AGI and people will believe them. Its when someone proves that AGI isn't possible with what we have, and the investors believe it, that's when the bubble bursts.
Too late (Score:2)
Wall Street already has its exit plan.
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Yeah just like derivatives in 2008, the actual paying American tax payer will foot the bill. And then re-elect the same crooks again in the continuing masochist spiral.
JoshK.
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Yeah just like derivatives in 2008, the actual paying American tax payer will foot the bill. And then re-elect the same crooks again in the continuing masochist spiral.
JoshK.
What is your solution, Josh? As Teddy Roosevelt noted... Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.
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"Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining." Teddy wasn't living in the latter part of the 20th century. The push to clean up the environment after the destruction caused by companies and their greed was "whining" until the "whining" became so loud that the gov. had to do something. The gov. did something not because they saw the pollution, the did something because the decibel level got high and the pols feared for their jobs.
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"Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining." Teddy wasn't living in the latter part of the 20th century. The push to clean up the environment after the destruction caused by companies and their greed was "whining" until the "whining" became so loud that the gov. had to do something. The gov. did something not because they saw the pollution, the did something because the decibel level got high and the pols feared for their jobs.
AKA, you are level 1000 whining. If that makes you happy, please do go on. Yah, no one has ever had it as bad as we duo now - not in the history of humanity. Never worse. Truth is, you are part of the problem homie, the ultimate victim, no possible solution. Damn, I feel kinda bad for what runs around in your poor depressed head.
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free haircuts for the job creators, starting from the bottom of the hairline
It's gonna burst (Score:2)
How does one spend 7x their yearly gross income 10 years in a row on equipment the bulk of which depreciates to nothing in less time? Last time I heard this kind of magical bullshit was during the lead up to the dot-com crash.
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How does one spend 7x their yearly gross income 10 years in a row on equipment the bulk of which depreciates to nothing in less time? Last time I heard this kind of magical bullshit was during the lead up to the dot-com crash.
Don't forget the cloud, which is showing that it doesn't work for shit any more https://www.techrepublic.com/a... [techrepublic.com] Amazing that as storage has become cheaper and cheaper we deliberately chose to store critical data in a failing environment. Trusting other people, the cloud service providers, and the people who found a wonderful attack vector.
So here we are once again, with Faultman and Nutella outlining their plans for the biggest bubble to ever emerge from griftmanities ass. Should be interesting when
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...the biggest bubble to ever emerge from griftmanities ass.
Grammar, my man! That would be "griftmanity's ass. "Griftmanities" is the set of areas of study to which griftmanity gives rise: fraud, hucksterism, Donald J. Trump, AI, Wall Street, advertising, etc.
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...the biggest bubble to ever emerge from griftmanities ass.
Grammar, my man! That would be "griftmanity's ass. "Griftmanities" is the set of areas of study to which griftmanity gives rise: fraud, hucksterism, Donald J. Trump, AI, Wall Street, advertising, etc.
Yikes! definitely my bad. 8^)
Revenue changes WILL be steep (Score:4, Informative)
I usually try out an LLM by asking for a list of 5 ten-letter words with the same letter at the start and end. The one I tried last night gave me a mix of 9, 10 and 11-letter words with none of them having the same letter at the start and end. I could have got better results by throwing darts at dictionary pages.
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here's what I got from DeepSeek, some dubious words and some very obvious failures:
Of course! Finding words that begin and end with the same letter is a fun linguistic challenge.
Here is a list of 10-letter words that fit your criteria, grouped by their starting/ending letter for easier reading.
Words Starting and Ending with 'A'
Armenian (a person from Armenia)
Australia (the country)
Anglophila (a strong admiration for England)
Agoraphoba (an archaic or variant spelling of agoraphobe, one who has agoraphobia)
An
Where's Moore's law in this (Score:3)
What I don't get is this: let's say they believe that to get to "genuinely useful AI" (generating value in business, automating science) they need 1024x the compute they have now; which I think is ballpark with their spending.
But Moore's law says that number of transistors doubles every 2 years, so if we believe we can keep this going then in 4 years time they'll only need 256x the data centres and in 8 years it's only going to be 64.
So all the chips they put in will be next to worthless in 8 years and they'll only need a fraction of the other infrastructure. So all this massive spend is to be first because? Because whoever is first will be able to use their "genuinely useful AI" to out-innovate everyone to singularity?
The whole thing is a one-way bet on the empirical LLM scaling laws (https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361) scaling to something useful, which I don't buy.
How thrillingly... (Score:2)
How thrillingly...modest and self-interested PR clip now that they're now for profit. Or maybe the AI said it...
JoshK.
Pepperidge Farms Remembers (Score:2)
Does anyone remember just a few short years ago when if an industry planned trillions in expanded electrical use and generation primarily from fossils, they'd have been shut down by the mass objection of society?
Pepperidge Farms Remembers
Tittle Reads Like Threat (Score:2)
Doing well? (Score:3)
With about $1T in spending, and $13B (oh, so much more, maybe $15B) in revenue? Not profit, *revenue*?
Bubble popping really soon.