OpenAI Declares 'Code Red' As Google Catches Up In AI Race 12
OpenAI has reportedly issued a "code red" on Monday, pausing projects like ads, shopping agents, health tools, and its Pulse assistant to focus entirely on improving ChatGPT. "This includes core features like greater speed and reliability, better personalization, and the ability to answer more questions," reports The Verge, citing a memo reported by the Wall Street Journal and The Information. "There will be a daily call for those tasked with improving the chatbot, the memo said, and Altman encouraged temporary team transfers to speed up development." From the report: The newfound urgency illustrates an inflection point for OpenAI as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars to fund growth and figures out a path to future profitability. It is also something of a full-circle moment in the AI race. Google, which declared its own "code red" after the arrival of ChatGPT, is a particular concern. Google's AI user base is growing -- helped by the success of popular tools like the Nano Banana image model -- and its latest AI model, Gemini 3, blew past its competitors on many industry benchmarks and popular metrics.
And then all at once (Score:2)
Winter is coming.
O no (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It used to take decades for companies to fully enshitify themselves. AI truly is an increase in productivity!
What was OpenAI's strategy anyway? (Score:2)
OpenAI were first movers in this thing, and got a pretty sizable userbase with Chatgpt, but, like a lot of tech wars, attrition and time may be the deciding factors and google and Meta can roll into the AI scene without having to worry as much about risk, because they're already very profitable, and can spend a ton of money without even borrowing.
So OpenAi had some options:
Sell itself to one of the big players, which they kinda did a bit with Microsoft and Oracle, but not entirely.
Or they could try to get e
Re: (Score:2)
What does OpenAI do if their AI is actually inferior to Google's or Amazon's? What do their investors do? What is their IPO going to be like if that happens?
My feeling for all of these companies and OpenAI that those diversification projects they just put on hold, they are all looking for the one thats really going to capture the mass public zeitgeist of sorts. In business AI is moving for sure but to the general public there really isn't that breakthrough yet. The money going into AI is trying by force of nature to make it as large as when the WWW first took off or like when smartphones took off.
OpenAI thinks it's Apple in 2009 but there's no App Store yet t
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, you're probably right. Very few people I know use AI in their home lives as opposed to in their work lives.
Its not really about being "the best" so much as being the thing everyone uses, I suppose. So capturing the mass public zeitgeist is definitly a way to win success.
reverse engineer this! (Score:1)
How hard is it to catch up (Score:2)
Isn't it a fake race with fake metrics? We have companies sinking many billions of dollars into some vague development of AI, but without concrete goals or definitive plans to turn that investment into revenue.
I guess if someone wants to declare themselves the winner, they'll simply have to be the one that burned the most capital on this boondoggle.
Re: (Score:2)
How can we make our system even more expensive to run and resource intensive, to destroy more land, water, and air before the population turns on us?
Re: (Score:2)
Talk to the people who are still furious about GPT 4 going away. They'll tell you that AI is just getting worse now and also that the new versions refuse to recognize that they're a starseed who is the reborn soul of Eleanor of Aquitaine. There are a suprisingly large number of GPT 4 lovers, I often find them in the wilds of the internet occasionally.
Daily Meetings = Imminent Failure (Score:2)
It is *never* a good sign when the CEO requires daily meetings. It means he does not have faith in his team to meet targets. They're grown-ass adults -- they don't need to be micro-managed.
One of these already makes a profit (Score:2)
... and it is not OpenAI.
The Big G is already (very) profitable and can fund a lot of development for a long time before they run out of money.
OpenAI not so much - they have a lot of investment, but they also have a lot of costs, and they have no other source of revenue.
Trying to pivot ChatGPT from answering your questions (with varying levels of accuracy) to answering your questions with deliberate bias towards whoever paid the most to get their product promoted (therefore with even less accuracy) is not n