Thread

1. heaney-555 · 1786046147 · focus · HN ↗

   Giving free ChatGPT users access to reasoning (the 'Think' toggle) will have a broader impact on the world than every new paid model and coding agent combined.

   1. daemonologist · 1786048088 · focus · HN ↗

      Going from 5.5 Instant (which was noticeably bad) to 5.6 Luna is a big jump as well. OpenAI is probably the most prominent among the generaly public - an advantage in some respects but they're giving away a lot of free inference and thus have to use a pretty small model to do it.

      1. johnsmith1840 · 1786050710 · focus · HN ↗

         I really don't see how they're going to be google here. The free tier is dominated by verticle integration and the platform that people use. Long term I imagine google wins the bottom of the market and I'd be suprised if they lost.

         1. tokioyoyo · 1786052342 · focus · HN ↗

            Ads.

            1. stymaar · 1786052691 · focus · HN ↗

               Ads work when you can server $.01 worth of ads to a user for $.0001 of server cost. I fail to see how you can make it work when doing LLM inference which is significantly costlier than web search.

               1. tokioyoyo · 1786053000 · focus · HN ↗

                  In about 4 months, OpenAI’s fundraiser decks will leak, which will include their current ad revenue.
               2. kristofferR · 1786056022 · focus · HN ↗

                  90+% of queries are probably so common that, if a cheaper model made all the different language varients and ways of asking the question into one query, they could be cached.
               3. virgildotcodes · 1786057859 · focus · HN ↗

                  I recently saw some discussion about the CPC for personal injury lawyers being ~$200 on Google ads. Seems insane to me, but I’m totally disconnected from the advertising world. That said, depending on the conversion rates between chats and clicks, the math could be favorable for OAI.

                  1. mikeshi42 · 1786061918 · focus · HN ↗

                     High CACs are supported by high LTVs, that is about the right ballpark for things like lawyers or even plumbers.
               4. famouswaffles · 1786058326 · focus · HN ↗

                  > I fail to see how you can make it work when doing LLM inference which is significantly costlier than web search.

                  The median LLM query isn't significantly costlier than web search.

               5. fragmede · 1786063702 · focus · HN ↗

                  Except that Google is giving AI answers for ~every search now, so they're paying that cost for every search now as well.
               6. keeda · 1786066561 · focus · HN ↗

                  That's a problem Google has to solve too ;-)

                  To expand: it seems inevitable that Google's SERP format will be replaced with a conversational / chatbot / agentic interface, which equalizes the playing field for all chatbot providers.

                  This is because you can stuff in much fewer ads into a chat interface compared to SERPs. (They could try stuffing more ads but that would likely just push users more to the competition who have a much lower baseline on which to show growth.) As such, Google would be forced to progressively nullify its own invincible firehose of ad revenue as they deprecate SERPs in favor of AI overviews.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.