[qp11]

Microsoft isn't any better. Competition in this space is dead. Who ever is capable of posing a threat to both these obese rentier parasites will be targeted and obliterated given the cash mountain ranges at their disposal. Quality is not possible when competition is an illusion.

[ben_w]

The only way competition in this space can be described as "dead" with all the free-license models bouncing about is that there's only one model (or company with models) that's actually worth paying for.

That would be the one that MS invested in.

Well, for now at least. At some point one of those free models will best it.

[netcan]

> there's only one model (or company with models) that's actually worth paying for.

Yes. Perhaps. That said "the model currently worth paying for" isn't the only possible business model or approach to "winning AI." It was a pretty incidental business model that unexpectedly got big.

I'm not convinced this is the final state.

AI models need users. There's having the most users. But, there's also having the right users. This isn't a linear race. Image generation. Language generation. Those work now. They'll get better... but it's still not clear what better enables. Best way to find out is by finding out what current models enable.

IMO, there's a lot more room here for bravery and creativity than beating OpenAI at whatever the race appear to be at this particular moment. The budget necessary to build applications is nothing compared to the scale of strategic investment being made.

Make the LLM chat/email client. Make the LLM project management software. CRM. tech support. All the cheap, obvious stuff.

Once upon a time, Google had a let 1000 flowers bloom approach. They did succeed in launching lots of pretty good products. They did not succeed in turning that tactical success into a strategic business success. That said, the tactic worked.

Why take the risk/effort/etc of winning the race to cloud services? Google have already lost one cloud race to google and amazon. Just build the apps yourselves. Find a framework. Do it. Don't want to run them forever? Then sell them off. Shut them down and leave the space open for startups.

Why futz around?

[mycall]

> AI models need users

Not when AI agents start doing their own thing, synthesizing their own data to go beyond what humans have conversed. The main thing keeping this from happening is data corruption. I don't know how that will be solved.

[paganel]

The only real competition seems to be Meta, which is another behemoth.

I agree, there are some minions whose valuations have skyrocketed because they happen to also try and compete in this very bubble-y market, but other than that I haven't heard any "those guys' LLM product is great!" comments related to anything other than whatever OpenAI or Meta have made public.