The immediate catalyst, it seems, is an intensifying focus on capex, or capital expenditures. Microsoft revealed that its spending surged 66% to $37.5 billion in the latest quarter, even as growth in its Azure cloud business cooled slightly. Even more concerning to analysts, however, was a new disclosure that approximately 45% of the company’s $625 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO)—a key measure of future cloud contracts—is tied directly to OpenAI, the company revealed after reporting earnings Wednesday afternoon. (Microsoft is both a major investor in and a provider of cloud-computing services to OpenAI.)

    • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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      2 days ago

      They don’t have a product with any actual value or use cases. The ads aren’t going to reverse that. If it were that simple then they would have been able to make profit with their subscription model.

      • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think we’re quite a long way off before they actually crash and burn, if they ever do. We have no idea how much money the ads will inject and they also receive significant government contracts and will probably get a lot more going forward

        If the market can pretend Tesla is worth so much i think it can easily sustain AI for many years

        • krashmo@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          It’s already been several years. Tesla had an actual product that people wanted. Yes, they’ve been doing their best of late to torpedo their market share and brand name but at one point they were doing what they set out to do. Open AI has never done what they said they would do.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Note that Tesla was clearly a viable business, I don’t see the justification for it being 3 times the value of ford, gm, Toyota, and Honda all put together.

            Generally people are not challenging the fundamental possibility of these as viable business, just that they don’t make sense at their valuations.

            Though I’ll agree that open ai particularly should get some skepticism. To the extent that actionable business models might emerge, I don’t see openai actually in a position to be a big party of any of it. Microsoft and Anthropic seem to mostly own business revenue, ChatGPT is generally not even providing the models people select when they are able to choose.

          • gustofwind@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Kinda but also not entirely. I know a lot of people who use ChatGPT and other AIs at work and it does basically exactly what they want and just gets better

            I’m not a proponent but the naysayer doomers are almost as wrong as the tech evangelists

            Is it overvalued? Sure

            Is it worthless? Absolutely not

            • krashmo@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              That’s cool. I have yet to find a use case for AI. Am I doing it wrong or are they just bad with computers?

              • Luckyfriend222@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                I am with gustofwind here. I use AI to help me quickly draft up mindless policies, then read through it and edit it where needed. It is a lot faster than any typing I can do.

                I also use it to help me find configs for stuff I deploy, but I make sure it attaches the source link for me, so I can read the original source docs and keep a sane approach to what I am doing.

                Again, I also think it is way overvalued, but to say it has not helped me build successful stuff over the past 2 years would be a lie. My 2c

      • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        How would that even work as well? The ads will be in the website, doesn’t most stuff run through API calls? If you force everyone to start paying per call, the business model falls apart instantly.

        • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          API calls are already only paid, no?

          I’m guessing the ads will be embedded in the answers of the free users (like: it will add to the prompt something like “and don’t forget to plug the sponsor, ridge wallet”)

          • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            Oh actually are they? I admit I assumed they were doing the standard bullshit of everything is free to get you integrated, then they start charging. Actually maybe that already happened and this is the result of that.