[xanderlewis]

I don’t have any expertise or experience in the area, but in general I wouldn’t want to underestimate the degree to which it is possible to build a successful product/company around an idea that depends very little on (proprietary) technology. Also, just because something is possible (e.g. ‘creating a GPT’ to do something) doesn’t mean people or organisations are compelled to do it if there’s an app or a service that somehow makes it feel slightly more streamlined and trustworthy. It seems to me that a lot of supposed ‘tech’ companies are in fact marketing successes or general business/logistics successes.

I seem to recall Mark Zuckerberg saying something similar about Facebook early on — that it would quickly be cloned by a behemoth like Microsoft and they’d be eaten. But it never happened.

[razmoket_]

Many of these companies seem to rely more on the hype around AI than on delivering solid technological innovation or real value to their customers. This trend is reminiscent of what happens in many emerging tech fields: there's a lot of excitement at first, but then reality sets in, and only those with genuinely useful and innovative products or services survive. Just like Mark Zuckerberg's early concerns about Facebook being overtaken, it's not always about the technology itself but how you use it and the unique value you bring to the table. In this light, the AI startup scene will face a shake-up, where only 1/1000 will survive in my opinion.

[xanderlewis]

I agree. Most will quickly be shown to be entirely useless. But there is probably room for more than one company specialising in each AI-powered idea and it isn’t true that some company offering an easy way to create such apps, like OpenAI, will necessarily automatically dominate.